Taj Mahal controversy created to deflect attention from Jay Shah: Kanhaiya

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, October 23

The controversy over Taj Mahal has been engineered by the BJP to deflect attention from the issue of manifold increase in Jay Shah’s wealth, student leader and former president of Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University Kanhaiya Kumar said here on Monday.

He was in the city for a ‘meet the press’ programme organised by the Chandigarh Press Club.

Kumar said the current controversy triggered around the origin of Taj Mahal was deliberately created by BJP leadership to deflect attention from the “real issue”, which was of “16,000 times increase in wealth of BJP president Amit Shah’s son Jay Shah’s companies”.

He said the situation in this country is such that when a media house or journalist tries to raise the real issues they are being intimidated with 100 crore defamation cases.

“Those who don’t get intimidated with cases, they are being killed,” he said, citing example of Bangalore-based journalist Gauri Lankesh, who was killed outside her home.

He said that when we talk about democracy in this country, the reference point would our Constitution. “Preamble of the Constitution starts with, We the people of India,” he said.  

“When you can’t express your views freely, it indicates that the very Constitution of India is in danger,” he lamented.  

The student leader said the way Election Commission of India has became partisan body by scheduling Gujarat Assembly elections according to the convenience of ruling party has also raised questions on the sanctity of the constitutional body.

Talking about the government’s decision of demonetisation and GST, Kumar said it is a known fact that big fish eat small fish.

“But with both the decisions the government has facilitated the big fish to eat the small fish,” he said.

He said the prime minister is just a face who he is dancing on the tunes of big corporate houses.