Govt has lost high moral ground: Yashwant Sinha

PATNA : Dissident Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Yashwant Sinha slammed the government on Wednesday for defending party chief Amit Shah’s son Jay Shah over allegations hurled against him and said it had thus lost its high moral ground.

“I don’t want to comment on the merit of the case as it is a matter of investigation but I would like to say the manner in which a central minister jumped into the fray... He is a central minister, not a chartered accountant of Jay Shah,” Sinha told a TV channel.

Sinha also criticised the government for allowing additional solicitor general Tushar Mehta to take on the case of Jay Shah.

“These were avoidable and should not have happened. The very special circumstances in which the additional solicitor general has been cleared to defend the person concerned also raises some issues and that was also to my mind avoidable.

“Looking at all these therefore perhaps the high moral ground that we had occupied all these months and years somehow appears to have been lost,” the former finance minister said.

Jay Shah’s company has allegedly recorded a turnover of ₹80 crore in 2015 after showing just ₹50,000 the previous year.

Asked about the defamation suit filed against the website that reported the story, Sinha said: “Media is a very important integral part of democracy and that is why it is regarded as the fourth pillar. To try and suppress the voice of media either directly or through any other means including for instance this defamation case was also avoidable.”