Jay Shah


Jay Amitbhai Shah is an Indian businessman and cricket administrator. In October 2019, he became the secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India.

Early life

Shah was born in 1987/1988 to Amit Shah, a political activist for the Bharatiya Janata Party's youth wing, Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, and Sonal Shah. He graduated from Nirma University with a B.Tech. He underwent cricket training in Ahmedabad under Jayendra Sehgal, who considered Shah to have been a "decent enough batsman."

Career

Shah worked as one of the directors of Temple Enterprise, a company which was founded in 2004 and involved in the trade of agricultural products. The company shut operations in October 2016. Shah owns a 60 per cent stake in Kusum Finserve which was established in 2015.
After serving as an executive board member of the Central Board of Cricket, Ahmedabad, starting 2009, Shah became the joint secretary of the Gujarat Cricket Association in September 2013. During his tenure as joint secretary, he oversaw GCA's construction of the Sardar Patel Stadium, the world's largest cricket stadium, in Ahmedabad, along with his father Amit Shah who was GCA president at the time; the project was reportedly the brainchild of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi who was the president of GCA before Amit Shah.
Shah became a member of the finance and marketing committees of the Board of Control for Cricket in India in 2015. He stepped down from the position of GCA joint secretary in September 2019. The following month, he was elected as the secretary of BCCI for a one-and-a-half-year term and the youngest of the five office bearers. In December 2019, the BCCI selected Shah as its representative for future CEC meetings of International Cricket Council.

Personal life

In February 2015, Shah married Rishita Patel, a college friend, in a traditional Gujarati ceremony.

Defamation case against ''The Wire''

Shah filed a criminal defamation case and a civil lawsuit of 100 crore against the editors of The Wire for an October 2017 article in which the website reported Shah's company revenue increased 16,000 times one year after Narendra Modi became the Indian Prime Minister. In 2018, the Gujarat High Court restored a gag order, earlier placed by a civil court, on the website, preventing it from publishing any content connecting Shah's businesses to Modi. In August 2019, The Wire withdrew its appeal against the criminal defamation case and announced that it will stand trial, even as the Supreme Court bench questioned the website's journalism standards.