[Prime Minister Modi and BJP President Amit Shah at Jay Shah's wedding reception. (File photo)]
Mumbai: A leading news portal which carried a story claiming that business fortunes of Jay Shah, son of Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) Chief Amit Shah, have seen sudden and surprising rise in a year after Modi government came to power in New Delhi is facing defamation suit.
“The article makes false, derogatory and defamatory imputations against me by creating in the minds of the right-thinking people an impression that my business owes its ‘success’ to my father Shri Amitbhai Shah’s political position,” Jay Shah said in the statement adding he will file a Rs 100-crore defamation suit against website for the publication of the article.
The BJP too came out strongly in defence of party chief's son.
In a press conference at the party headquarters here, Union Railways Minister and BJP leader Piyush Goel said the news report was mischievous, malicious and baseless.in 2015-16.
Based on the filings with Registrar of Companies (ROC), online portal The Wire claimed that Temple Enterprise Private Limited — the company owned by Jay Shah — saw an increase in its turnover from Rs.50,000 in 2014-15 to Rs.80 crore.
After the report was published online, Congress attacked BJP president Amit Shah and asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to explain what it called the “Shah model of business” and demanding an enquiry.
"We finally found the only beneficiary of Demonetisation. It's not the RBI, the poor or the farmers. It's the Shah-in-Shah of Demo. Jai Amit", Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi tweeted hours after the report was online.
Senior lawyer and Congress MP Kapil Sibal is quoted by The Hindu as saying, “We would like to ask the Prime Minister to explain the Shah model of business. What would he say now to crony capitalism? Would he ask for an investigation by the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate as they normally do in the case of people from the Opposition.”We finally found the only beneficiary of Demonetisation. It's not the RBI, the poor or the farmers. It's the Shah-in-Shah of Demo. Jai Amit https://t.co/2zHlojgR2c
— Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) October 8, 2017
When pointed out that a 16,000 times jump in turnover of Jay Amit Shah’s company doesn’t show any wrongdoing, Sibal countered by saying, “Many private persons who didn’t occupy any position were targeted when we were in power.”