Veerappa Moily denies favouring 'any corporate'

New Delhi, Mar 20: A day after BJP leaders in

alleged that the

group gave Rs 6 crore as unsecured loan to a company run by the family members of Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister

, he denied the charge and further claimed to have never helped "any corporate".

Sunil Kumar who heads the state Yuva Morcha unit told newspersons in Bangalore on Tuesday that the Kisan Maha Sabha Trust operated by Moily's family had encroached upon government land in the Dakshina Kannada district of Karnataka.

According to Sunil Kumar, the trust had encroached 20 cents of 'Gomala' land that was set aside for cattle grazing in Karkala town. He accused Moily of illegally allotting the 'Gomala' land to the Kisan Maha Sabha Trust during his tenure as Karnataka chief minister in 1995-96.

Referring to media reports on Monday that ITC had given huge donations to the same trust, Kumar noted that it had not paid tax in the two aforementioned cases and demanded Moily's resignation.

On Wednesday, the union minister issued a clarification. "I would like to categorically state that there have been absolutely no occasion for me to extend any kind of favour or help to any corporate for seeking financial assistance for the (Kisan Maha Sabha) Trust," Moily said.

He pointed out that his son Harsha is "a trustee in the Kisan Sabha Trust" and also "professionally manages" a company MokshaYug Access India Pvt Ltd (MYA) "that is playing an important role in driving prosperity in rural India."

Expressing anguish over Harsha "being condemned by vested interests merely because he happens to be son of a political person", Moily averred that "Harsha has been successfully working towards social cause on the basis of his own conscience and without any political ambitions."

"MYA is a professionally run company engaged in the activities beneficial to the people belonging to bottom of the pyramid of economic development," Moily said.

About Reliance Industries executive Ananth Ravi's association with MYA, the minister said that Ravi first met Harsha in 1999. "Moreover, the mentorship role that Ananth Ravi played was between December 2010 to July 2011 when he was not employed with Reliance and Ravi excluded himself from the Advisory Board upon re-joining Reliance in August 2011," Moily added.

Harsha had earlier stated that his company "received funding from professional investors in 2008, much before my father joined the government." He said that the "investors did due diligence on MYA through the most part of 2007, and the funding from VCs (venture capitalists) came through in March 2008."

OneIndia News