Our party lost moral high ground due to Amit Shah’s son: BJP leader

News Network

October 11, 2017

BJP veteran and former union minister Yashwant Sinha has said that the saffron party has "lost the moral high ground" due to a corruption scandal involving the son of its chief Amit Shah.

Sinha said that the BJP appears guilty of many lapses: producing senior ministers to defend Mr Shah's son, entrepreneur Jay Shah, and farming out a top government lawyer, Tushar Mehta, to represent Jay Shah in court.

Jay Shah has sued The Wire, a news website, for 100 crores for defamation for reporting his firm's revenues escalated by 16,000 times after the BJP came to power. The report also questioned allegedly unsecured loans given to Jay Shah's firms, including from a state-run firm that reports to the Power Ministry.

"The way the loan was given to Jai Shah by the Power Ministry and the way (minister) Piyush Goyal defended him, it gives the impression that there's something wrong," said Mr Sinha, whose son, Jayant Sinha, is a minister in the union government.

"Even Additional Solicitor General (Tushar Mehta) representing a private individual in court is something that never happened before," Mr Sinha, a former finance minister, said in Patna. Mr Mehta said he sought and obtained the clearance of the Law Ministry to advise Jay Shah.

"The government should order an inquiry because too many government departments are involved," said Mr Sinha, backing what the opposition has demanded. "The BJP has lost the high moral ground of zero tolerance on corruption," he added.

Last month, Sinha provoked his party by expounding in detail on the economic slowdown which he attributed to the poor timing and handling of the key reforms of demonetisation and the new national sales tax or GST. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, whom he singled out for sharp criticism, responded by describing the party veteran as "a job applicant at 80."

Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a lengthy speech last week said that pessimists were misrepresenting the slowdown of one quarter (5.7 percent growth for the last quarter) to claim an economic failure.

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India’s Modi govt will buy oil from Venezuela, not Iran: Trump’s big claim

News Network

February 1,2026

US President Donald Trump on Saturday claimed that the government of India led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made a deal to buy Venezuelan oil, as opposed to purchasing it from Iran.

"We've already made that deal, the concept of the deal," he told reporters on Air Force One.

Trump had imposed 25% tariffs on countries buying Venezuelan oil, including India, in March 2025. He had also hit India with tariffs for buying Russian oil, saying it was "funding" President Vladimir Putin's war against Ukraine.

Trump has said that the US has taken control of the oil-rich Venezuela after capturing former President Nicolas Maduro in January.

A fleet of 18 ships loaded with crude oil bound for refineries in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi in January, the most since December 2024, according to a report by the news agency Bloomberg.

Combined crude deliveries to the US will reach about 2,75,000 barrels a day, more than doubling volumes seen in December last year. Shipments to China, which averaged 4,00,000 barrels a day last year, fell to zero in January.

PM Modi, Venezuelan President Agree To Expand Ties

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Venezuela's acting President Delcy Rodriguez spoke on Friday and agreed to take the bilateral relations to "new heights" in the years ahead.

It was the first phone call between the two leaders since the capture of Maduro and his wife by the US on January 3.

"Spoke with Acting President of Venezuela, Ms. Delcy Rodriguez. We agreed to further deepen and expand our bilateral partnership in all areas, with a shared vision of taking India-Venezuela relations to new heights in the years ahead," PM Modi said in a post on X.

A statement from Prime Minister Modi's office said the two leaders agreed to further expand and deepen the India-Venezuela partnership in all areas, including trade and investment, energy, digital technology, health, agriculture, and people-to-people ties.

They exchanged views on various regional and global issues of mutual interest and underscored the importance of their close cooperation for the Global South, the statement said.

Rodriguez also said that they discussed partnerships in the fields of agriculture, science and technology, mining, and tourism, as well as the pharmaceutical and automotive industries.

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