Shah likely to address two rallies tomorrow at north Bengal
Once again, Union home minister Amit Shah is coming to West Bengal to address political rallies.
The controversy sparked by a news website’s report pointing to a 16,000 times spike in the turnover of a company Temple Enterprise Pvt Ltd owned by Jay Shah, son of BJP president Amit Shah ~ from Rs 50,000 in 2014-15 to Rs 80.5 crore in 2015-16 ~ continued to make waves on Monday, with the principal Opposition Congress demanding that Prime Minister Narendra Modi should make a statement and secure Amit Shah’s resignation to ensure an impartial inquiry into the matter.
Highlighting that the “staggering surge” in the revenues of Jay Shah’s company occurred after Modi became PM and Shah became BJP chief, top Congress leaders continued to fire salvos at the ruling camp.
All the allegations in the matter have been rejected by the BJP and Jay Shah who has dismissed the news report as “false, derogatory and defamatory” while announcing that he will file a criminal and a Rs 100 crore civil defamation case against the news website, The Wire, in Ahmedabad. The Opposition parties, including the Congress, Left and AAP, have demanded a proper investigation into the matter.
Keeping his guns trained on the ruling dispensation, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Monday tweeted to ask PM Modi to “say something” on the controversy, asking him whether he played the role of “chowkidar (watchman)” or he was an alleged “bhagidar (partner)” in the Jay Shah case.
The senior All India Congress Committee (AICC) spokesman Anand Sharma told reporters, “The Prime Minister speaks on every issue…There should be a probe into this case… Amit Shah should give up his post until the probe is over, like L K Advaniji did, Nitin Gadkariji did when charges were levelled against them (in separate cases).”
Sharma also criticised the Modi dispensation for a loan of Rs 10.35 crore from a public sector enterprise under the New and Renewable Energy Ministry, Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA), to Jay Shah’s another firm Kusum Finserve ~ which trades in stocks and shares ~ for setting up a 2.1 MW wind energy plant in Ratlam in Madhya Pradesh. Piyush Goyal was then its Minister.
Sharma also took a dim view of Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Tushar Mehta’s bid to represent Jay Shah in his defamation case against the news website, asking how could Tushar seek and secure Union Law and Justice Ministry’s permission in this regard on 6 October when even the story was not published.
Separately, the AICC’s chief spokesman Randeep Surjewala demanded that PM Modi should remove Amit Shah from the BJP president’s post for the sake of an impartial probe into the entire Jay Shah episode. He demanded that this inquiry should be conducted by a panel of two sitting Supreme Court judges.
Maintaining that there must be transparency and accountability, Surjewala said : “It is a tough call for Prime Minister Modi. Country is looking at him whether he will choose friendship and party politics, or truth and morality,” adding “why shy away from probe if there’s nothing wrong…there is no smoke without fire”.
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