BJP defends Shah’s son
The political discourse touched a new low on Sunday with the Opposition parties clamouring for a probe into claims in a news portal’s article that a company owned by BJP chief Amit Shah's son saw a huge spurt in its turnover after his party came to power in 2014.
The charge was rejected by the BJP and Shah's son, Jay, who termed the story "false, derogatory and defamatory". Jay will also slap on The Wire, the online portal, a defamation suit for Rs. 100 crore.
‘‘The article makes false, derogatory and defamatory imputations against me by creating in the minds of the right-thinking people an impression that my business owes its ‘success’ to my father Shri Amitbhai Shah’s political position,” Jay said in the statement.
He also asserted that his "businesses are fully legitimate... and are reflected in my tax records" and that he has repaid loans "by cheque on commercial rate of interest." Training their guns at the Modi government by raking up the portal’s content, the Congress, the Left and the AAP demanded an investigation, with Congress leader Kapil Sibal alleging that it was a case of "crony capitalism". "Today, we want to ask the Prime Minister, the pradhan sevak: Now, what do you have to say about crony capitalism? Will you give a direction to the CBI to probe the matter? Will you ask the ED to arrest these people," Sibal asked at a press conference here.
The demand from the opposition came after the portal’s article, which has cited filings with the Registrar of
Companies, claimed that the turnover of Jay’s Temple Enterprise zoomed by 16,000 times during 2015-16 to around Rs 80 crore over the previous year.
Putting up a strong defence, Union minister Piyush Goyal dismissed their charge and released a statement by Jay in which he said that he will sue the author, the editor and the owner of the news website which had published the story, for Rs 100 crore. “All loans taken (by Jay Shah) were in accordance with the law and were paid back with full interest, well within the time limit,” said Goyal.
He also said that Jay had given a point-by-point rebuttal to all of the author’s questions before the article was published, but still the news website went ahead with it.
Goyal explained that the firm was dealing in agro commodities in which there is "high volume and high value but low profit margin". "So, even if you do just a few transactions, the volume is very high. Rs 80 crore is not a large turnover in commodity business," he said.
Goyal also rubbished the allegations as the ‘old Congress style’. He charged that it was the Congress which had something to hide about the alleged irregularities of Robert Vadra in land dealings.
BJP’s national IT cell chief Amit Malviya also defended Jay in a series of tweets.
“Every new business starts with nil turnover on day one, expands later. What is wrong with legitimate expansion of business? This was a legitimate commodity export import business, where volumes are high and margins are low…Is Jay Shah not allowed to take loan on market rates of interest from a registered NBFC? Where is the favour / impropriety? Since when has taking a loan by cheque become illegal? Jay Shah company took a loan from NBFC, disclosed it in income tax,” he wrote on Twitter. Input PTI