Rejecting allegations levelled by a news website against BJP president Amit Shah’s son Jay Shah, Union minister Piyush Goyal said, “Jay Shah will file a criminal defamation suit of Rs 100 crore against the author, editor and owner of the news website.”
Goyal was addressing a press conference after Opposition parties trained guns on the government latching on to the news report. Goyal also presented a statement from Jay Shah.
“The article makes false, derogatory and defamatory imputation against me by creating in the minds of right-thinking people an impression that my business owes its ‘success’ to my father Shri Amitbhai Shah’s political position… My businesses are fully legitimate and conducted in a lawful manner on commercial lines, which is reflected in my tax records, and are through banking transactions,” the statement read.
The news website alleged that a firm owned by Jay Shah had seen a dramatic increase in businesses since the BJP government came to power at the Centre. Responding to a charge that the main business of the firm was trading in stocks and that its RoC filings reveal it was involved in diversifying into a completely unrelated field — setting up a 2.1 megawatt windmill plant worth Rs 15 crore in Ratlam, MP – Goyal asked: “Are we against startups? Are we against anybody venturing into any new business in India? By this logic, we all have to stop doing work.”
The minister added: “All loans were in accordance with law and were paid back with full interest. We believe in legitimate and honest transactions. We don’t take refuge in falsehood as the Congress is known to do.”
Asking the Congress to come clean instead, Goyal said that it should not try to stop the Dhingra Commission report (which had indicted Sonia Gandhi’s son-in law Robert Vadra for his controversial land deals) from becoming public.
