Cong carpet bombing, asks Amit Shah to quit

Stepping up pressure on BJP President Amit Shah over his son Jay's company recording a 16,000 time spike in turnover, the Congress on Monday asked him to resign, following in the footsteps of the party leaders like Lal Krishna Advani and two BJP Presidents -- Nitin Gadkari and Bangaru Lakshman.

Senior Congress leader Anand Sharma also asked Prime Minister Modi to break his silence and institute a 2judge inquiry commission to investigate the issue, as the most intriguing was the fact that the company, which had just started making a bumper profit, shut down barely four weeks before demonetisation.

He cited how BJP veteran Advani had resigned from the Lok Sabha after his name figured in the Jain Hawala diary, Gadkari quit as the party president on allegations against companies in which his relatives were the director, and former BJP president Bagaru Lakshman was forced to resign after being caught on camera taking money.

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, who is on a second 3-day tour of poll-bound Gujarat, tweeted, asking PM Modi to say something on the disclosures. "Modiji, Jay Shah Jyada Kha gaya. Aap Chowkidar the ya Bhagidar? Kuchh to boliye (Modiji, Jay Shah ate too much.

Were You the watchman or the partner? Say something," Rahul tweeted. In another tweet, he said: "We finally found the only beneficiary of Demonetisation. It's not the RBI, the poor or the farmers. It is the Shah-in-Shah of Demo. Jai Amit." Anand Sharma also asked Union Minister Piyush Goyal to explain why he had to give explanations for a private person and a private company and that too from the BJP platform.

He also questioned the sanction of Rs 25 crore loan by Kalupur Commercial Cooperative Bank for a mere collateral of two properties worth Rs 6.20 Crore. Sharma alleged that the two properties that were put as collateral security by Jay are properties of Amit Shah and his friend Yashpal Chudasma, a co-accused with Amit Shah in a fake encounter case.

"There are clear RBI guidelines that the maximum loan that can be given must be equivalent to the amount of the collateral; but here in this case the value of the collateral is a mere one fourth of the loan sanctioned and this is a clear violation of RBI guidelines," Sharma pointed. He said Jay Shah must have the skills to make his company make a huge profit in just one year and it would be better still if these skills are also taught to the new entrepreneurs the Modi government is promoting to establish own start-ups.