On Tuesday (August 2), Shiv Sena leader and Rajya Sabha MP Priyanka Chaturvedi ignited the controversy surrounding the ownership of Silly Souls restaurant in Goa by Smriti Irani’s daughter, Zoish Irani.
“Seriously Silly Souls. Which version does one believe?”, she tweeted while attaching 2 screenshots of reports from Money Control and The Indian Express.
The attempt by the Sena leader to cast aspersions about Zoish Irani comes days after the Delhi High Court junked similar allegations levelled by the Congress party.
Priyanka Chaturvedi’s tweet was not just a cheap attempt at scoring political brownies but also a clear reflection of her poor comprehension skills. To bolster her arguments, the Sena leader shared a news report published by Money Control.
Titled, ‘Smriti Irani is a proud mom as praise pours in for her daughter’s culinary skills’, the report published in April this year stated that food writer Kunal Vijaykar praised ‘owner’ Zoish Irani for the tour of ‘Silly Souls Restaurant’.
“My craving for Asian food has got me to Goa Silly Souls and to my surprise apart from the yummy and delicious Asian spread the owner Zoish Irani has a superb menu of Italian food as well,” his Instagram post read.
Smriti Irani then posted a screenshot of the post on her Instagram story and wrote, ” So proud Zoish Irani, Silly Souls Goa.” Her story did not corroborate the claim by food writer Kunal Vijaykar that Zoish Irani was the owner of the restaurant.
Vijakar had erred in his Instagram post and mistook Zoish Irani as Silly Souls’ owner. As a matter of fact, she was an intern who happened to give a tour of the restaurant to the food writer.
Her lawyer Kirat Nagra recently clarified that Zoish Irani “has no control or oversight into the management and affairs of the eatery and her limited interaction at the facility was only while doing an internship program with the chef of Silly Souls Café.”
Priyanka Chaturvedi has the right to disbelieve the lawyer of Zoish Irani out of political compulsions. However, the confusion over the ownership, as claimed by the Sena leader, would have still made sense if the matter was raised in April 2022.
In the absence of judicial intervention and publicly available documents, claims of ingenuity could have been justified back then. But, the Delhi High Court has made it crystal clear that neither Smriti Irani nor Zoish Irani is the owner of ‘Silly Souls.’
In the order copy, Justice Mini Pushkarna emphasised, “Neither the restaurant nor the land on which the restaurant exists is owned by the plaintiff or her daughter”. The Delhi High Court said that prima facie, the court was convinced that the statements against Smriti Irani were libellous and slanderous and done with malicious intent.
On July 29, the real owners of the restaurant Merlyn Anthony D’Gama and her son Dean D’Gama replied to a show cause notice issued by Excise Commissioner Narayan M Gad. In the reply, they stated that the property “is exclusively its business and involves no other person/ persons”.
When the Court has junked all allegations of ‘ownership’, and the real owners have issued a clarification on the matter, it makes no sense to put across a news report from April to allege a ‘large conspiracy’ behind the court ruling.
Priyanka Chaturvedi felt it was ‘okay’ to pass off erroneous, obsolete information as truth while ignoring the new developments in the story. Besides malicious intent at defaming a young girl, it also highlights the Sena leader’s lack of logical reasoning abilities.
Priyanka Chaturvedi and her struggle with Mathematics
Earlier in 2020, Priyanka Chaturvedi had displayed her poor understanding of Mathematics. During the migrant crisis following the Coronavirus lockdown, she falsely claimed that the Modi government amassed huge profits by running special trains for migrant workers.
The Sena leader failed to comprehend the difference between the ‘revenue earned’ and ‘profit’. Contrary to the claims of Priyanka Chaturvedi that the Indian Railways earned huge profits, the Railways has spent Rs 2,142 crore on running Shramik Special trains but earned a ‘revenue’ of just Rs 429 crore and did not incur any ‘profit’.
In fact, the Modi government had incurred a loss of nearly Rs 1,700 crores after it ran Shramik trains to ferry back the stranded migrant labours from various parts of the country.
She had falsely claimed that 15% of all students are somehow dyslexic and that their total count stood at 228 million.
“For a disorder that is believed to occur in one among ten people, the figure given by Priyanka Chaturvedi looks highly disproportionate. If we were to look at the total population of India, then again the figure of more than 22.8 crores only among the school going population out of a total population of 125 crores turns out to be highly exaggerated”, read an article in The Frustrated Indian.
The incidence of dyslexia in India is believed to be 15%. As per a 2013 report, there are 228,994,454 dyslexic students enrolled in recognized schools
— Priyanka Chaturvedi🇮🇳 (@priyankac19) March 4, 2019
This message for an insensitive PM Modi who doesn’t mind mocking them for political point scoring.
Brilliantly done @arvindtm pic.twitter.com/rEQrSxxLpd
As early as 2014, she was seen misreading numbers and portraying growth as an impediment of Modi government’s Aache Din
Happy Teacher’s Day to maths teachers of Priyanka Chaturvedi pic.twitter.com/qY5JwnOcky
— Ra_Bies 2.0 (@Ra_Bies) September 5, 2016
While Priyanka Chaturvedi had earlier struggled with Mathematics, it is high time for her to take tuition classes for logical reasoning and comprehsion too.
