New Delhi : A high-level Congress delegation led by its senior advocates Kapil Sibal and Abhishek Singhvi on Monday petitioned the Election Commission to initiate proceedings to suspend Rajya Sabha membership of BJP president Amit Shah with immediate effect for filing a false election affidavit that attracts up to six months of jail and/or a fine.
In a memorandum to the commission, it accused Shah of “deliberate, corrupt and willful non-disclosure” of liabilities he had towards Gujarat’s largest cooperative bank, Kalupur Commercial Cooperative Bank, for mortgaging his two properties in 2016 for his son Jay Shah”s business venture Kusum Finserve LLP for securing large Rs 25-crore loan.
The properties mortgaged to the bank constitute a liability that was not disclosed by Shah in the nomination he filed in July last year for contesting the Rajya Sabha election.
Sibal and Singhvi told reporters after petitioning the EC that Shah can’t escape by claiming he had nothing to do with the liability of his son’s firm since he was the surety whose liability is “as coextensive with the person/body corporate taking the loan.”
They clarified to ridicule the claim of a BJP spokesman on Saturday that Shah cannot be liable for any loan taken by his son”s firm, immediately after Congress spokesman and former union minister Jairam Ramesh spilled the beans on the way his son Jay not only secured loans mortgaging his father”s properties but also secured a plot in an industrial area from the BJP government in Gujarat and a project for wind power in Madhya Pradesh using his father”s political influence.