Headlines
Jayanthi Natarajan quits Congress, attacks Rahul Gandhi
Chennai, Jan 30
Senior Congress leader Jayanthi Natarajan, a onetime party spokesperson
who was considered quite close to former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi,
Friday quit the party, sending shock waves through its political
establishment. She accused the party leadership, particularly party vice
president Rahul Gandhi, of letting her down, especially during her term
as environment minister in the previous UPA government.
"I announce my resignation (from the party)," Natarajan said at a packed media conference in Chennai.
Congress
leaders were quick to defend Rahul Gandhi and party chief Sonia Gandhi
and said they did not interfere in the working of ministers.
Natarajan
has joined people like G.K.Vasan and B.S. Gnanadesikan of the Tamil
Nadu Congress to quit the party after saying they felt slighted by the
party's national leadership.
She said: "I feel that the time has
come now for me to rethink my association because what happened in the
recent past. The Congress is no longer the Congress that I joined." She
has been in the party for the last three decades and has been a
four-time member of the Rajya Sabha.
Natarajan quit after
writing a letter to Congress party president Sonia Gandhi. Her letter
took the party including the Tamil Nadu unit by surprise but it sought
to put a brave face. "The party will not be weakened by her absence,"
said Tamil Nadu Congress's chief E.V.K.S. Elangovan.
Natarajan,
who was asked to put in her papers Dec 20, 2013, by then prime minister
Manmohan Singh, said: "(I) received several requests and representations
from Rahul Gandhi's office to ensure that the environment is
protected."
"And according to these instructions...I did my duty.
I had these projects investigated and some of them I stopped," she said
and added that she got "specific inputs" from Rahul Gandhi's office.
Natarajan said she has sufficient proof of Rahul Gandhi's specific
requests on environmental clearance related to projects. "Let Rahul
Gandhi refute it."
It was however not clear why she waited so
long to air her frustration and grievances, since she had stepped down
from the government in December 2013 and it has been a good eight months
since the general elections led to the fall of the Congress-led UPA
government.
Congress leader and former union minister Veerappa Moily, however, said Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi never interfered.
"...I
have not come across any instance where the Congress president or
vice-president interfered with administration," Moily told reporters in
Bangalore.
Congress leader Digvijaya Singh too said in Delhi:
"...it is totally wrong that either Sonia Gandhi or Rahul Gandhi ever
interfered in the functioning of UPA government. Ministers were free to
take decisions."
Grand-daughter of former Tamil Nadu chief
minister M. Bhaktavatsalam, Natarajan hails from a family of Congress
veterans who were associated with the Indian National Congress since its
inception in 1885.
Her great-grandfather was a member of India's Constituent Assembly.
A
Chennai-based lawyer, Natarajan entered politics as a Youth Congress
worker in the 1980s. She was later noticed by the then Congress
president Rajiv Gandhi. She went to the Rajya Sabha for the first time
in 1986.
In a career that spans over 30 years, she has thrice
been re-elected to the upper house of the parliament in 1992, 1997 and
2008.
Natarajan, who was frequently seen on television, was dropped as a Congress spokesperson in January 2014.
Natarajan
said on becoming the environment minister, party president Sonia Gandhi
had told her to maintain the Congress tradition of protecting the
environment as was done by former prime ministers Indira Gandhi and
Rajiv Gandhi. She was considered close to Rajiv Gandhi and was one of
those who was present at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu when Rajiv Gandhi
was assassinated May 21, 1991.
Despite withstanding the "anger
and wrath of all the colleagues who protested that economic progress was
being blocked", Natarajan said she was told to resign from the cabinet.
A visibly miffed Natarajan said: "After the Congress, I intend to think about my life and future."
"I have absolutely no plan to join any party," she said and added that no BJP leader has met her in this connection.
She welcomed a government probe into environmental clearances given by her and demanded that the probe should be transparent.
"I
have to set the record straight to uphold the legacy of my family and
my reputation. It has been a bitter experience for me for the past
one-and-half years. My own party treated me badly," she said.
"Why
for a year everyone ruined my reputation and tarnished the legacy of my
family," she asked. "I only followed the rules. Did not break the
rules."
Charging the Congress of letting her down by allowing her
name and her family's name to be tarnished, Natarajan refuted that she
had let down the party by not contesting in the recent Lok Sabha polls.
"I
was not in a condition to contest the Lok Sabha polls when my name,
reputation and my family's legacy was being tarred," Natarajan said.
Many
senior Congress leaders from Tamil Nadu, including former finance
minister P. Chidambaram, did not contest in the Lok Sabha polls. The
Congress party drew a blank in all the 39 seats in the state.