A top government lawyer at the Centre has said that he may defend the son of BJP President Amit Shah in the matter concerning allegations of financial impropriety.
This was a day after a website alleged that the turnover of the company owned by Jay Amitbhai Shah had increased 16,000 times since Narendra Modi came to power at the Centre in 2014. The report published by The Wire also alleged that Jay Shah’s company had stopped its business operations after benefiting from unprecedented windfall gain in 2015-16.
In an explosive piece, The Wire website wrote that the balance sheets and annual reports obtained from the RoC had revealed that in the financial years ending March 2013 and 2014, Shah’s Temple Enterprise Private Ltd. engaged in negligible activity and recorded losses of Rs 6,230 and Rs 1,724 respectively. In 2014-15, it showed a profit of Rs 18,728 on revenues of only Rs 50,000 before jumping to a turnover of Rs 80.5 crore in 2015-16.
However, a year after its worth increased by 16,000 times, Temple Enterprise Private Ltd reportedly wound up its operations by stopping its business activities altogether, declaring, in its director’s report, that Temple’s net worth had “fully eroded” because of the loss it posted that year of Rs 1.4 crore and its losses over earlier years.
Tushar Mehta, the government’s additional solicitor general, has said that he had sought the permission from the law ministry to represent Jay Shah.
He told NDTV channel, “I have taken permission from the Law Ministry on 6th October for this issue. I am being consulted in this case. I may even appear for the case in court.”
This came after the Union Railways Minister Piyush Goyal took an unusual step to hold an emergency press conference to defend his party president’s son, who’s a private citizen and is in no way connected to government.
Congress has asked Prime Minister to order immediate probe by the Enforcement Directorate and CBI while also demanding answers from him. The Congress also accused the government of promoting what it said was crony capitalism.
Meanwhile, Jay Shah has said that he will file a criminal defamation worth Rs 100 crore against the journalist, her editor and the website. This was tweeted from the BJP’s official Twitter handle on Sunday.
