WHEN THE CBI filed its report earlier this week closing the case against Jayanthi Natarajan, it caused barely a whimper – an anti-climactic end to an allegation that once made one of the UPA’s most prominent leaders the face of the anti-corruption campaign that helped Narendra Modi to power in 2014.
Such has been the eclipse of Natarajan – the granddaughter of the last Congress leader to be Tamil Nadu chief minister, M Bhaktavatsalam – that even her former colleagues chose not to react. Neither did the BJP, which propagated the term “Jayanthi Tax”, coined by Modi, for the money the then Minister of State (Independent charge) for Environment and Forests allegedly charged to clear projects.
Natarajan herself has not been seen or heard in public for a while now.
The CBI closure report this week dealt with a corruption case against Natarajan over diversion of forest land for a steel plant in Jharkhand in 2012, allegedly in violation of laws.
Sources in the Congress said the party did not want to put the spotlight on the charges made by the BJP about the UPA government in 2014, by raising the Natarajan case, particularly amidst the latest round of elections.
Not that the Congress and Natarajan have any love lost. Amidst the mounting BJP “Jayanthi Tax” campaign, Natarajan had resigned as minister on December 21, 2013, months before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. She offered no reason, and neither did the party. Congress sources though admitted she was asked to quit because of complaints against her by corporate houses and industry over the delay in environmental clearances for high-worth projects.
The Indian Express had then reported that Natarajan had been sitting on nearly 350 files, many of them related to project clearances. Documents showed that as many as 180 files returned from her residence on December 22, 23 and 24 – after her resignation – were unsigned, while 119 signed files were still held back for some reason.
On the day she resigned, Rahul Gandhi – not yet Congress president, and seeking to build an image as a leader cut from a different cloth – said in an interaction with industry leaders: “Frankly, there are no excuses for the length of time required to clear some of these projects. We are a fast-moving economy. We cannot allow you to be held back by slow decision-making. Accountability has to be clear, fixed and time-bound.”
He had added: “The biggest problem is absolute arbitrary powers at all levels of the system… In India, there are a lot of arbitrary powers. The Environment Minister or the Chief Minister can take any decision he wants.”
A month later, Modi, by then the prime ministerial candidate of the BJP, waded in. “We had heard of income, sales and excise taxes, but for the first time, we heard about a ‘Jayanthi Tax’ in Delhi, without which nothing moved. Till the time that was not paid, files would not move in the Environment Ministry. I have never experienced it myself as I never needed it, but we are shocked by this. What kind of systems have they developed!” Modi said at one of his election rallies in January 2014.
Both the Congress and Natarajan denied the allegations. She accused Modi of targeting her as she had been very vocal against him in the past and had blocked two projects of the Gujarat government led by him. “It is a targeted personal attack. I totally deny what he says. It is completely baseless. There are major green violations in Gujarat. He was destroying the environment. I was opposed to his destruction of the environment,” Natarajan said.
However, Modi’s ‘Jayanthi Tax’ jibe stuck.
One year later, in January 2015, a stung Natarajan resigned from the Congress.
Around the same time, a letter Natarajan had written to Sonia, on November 5, 2014, came into the public domain. In her letter, she wrote that pressure had been put on her, from the “highest level” in the Congress, to make personal attacks on Modi, against her wishes.
She accused Rahul of interfering in the Environment Ministry by sending her “specific requests” regarding green clearances for large projects, and said that she duly stopped the same to “honour those requests”. Natarajan claimed that later, Rahul “changed his stand in favour of corporates” and she was “vilified, humiliated and sidelined” by the party leadership.
“I have done no wrong. I am willing to be hanged or go to jail if any concrete proof of my wrongdoing is established,” she said.
She also claimed that a file on the Adani Group had gone missing and officials had later found it “apparently in the washroom of the computer section” the very day she was told to resign as minister. “Clearly, some officials in my then Ministry did not want to send that file back to me, for unknown reasons.”
Natarajan also wrote: “As Chairperson, NAC (National Advisory Council), you have written several letters to me regarding projects in the Environment Ministry, and protection of tribal rights, and I have always kept you briefed… I received specific requests (which used to be directives for us) from Shri Rahul Gandhi and his office forwarding environmental concerns in some important areas and I took care to honour those ‘requests’.”
Natarajan specifically referred to Rahul’s high-profile visit to Niyamgiri hills in Odisha, and how he had “publicly declared to the Dongria Kondh tribals that he would be their ‘sipahi (soldier)’ and would not allow their interests to suffer at the hands of mining giant Vedanta”.
After his views in the matter were conveyed to her by his office, Natarajan claimed, “I took great care to ensure that the interests of the tribals were protected and rejected environmental clearance to Vedanta despite tremendous pressure from my colleagues in the Cabinet, and huge criticism from industry, for what was described as ‘stalling’ a Rs 30,000-crore investment from Vedanta. Fortunately, my decision was upheld by the Supreme Court.”
“The same happened in the case of the Adani projects, where I faced tremendous criticism from within the Cabinet and outside, for stalling investment at a time when the country was going through a difficult time in terms of the economy. The complaints of the local fisherfolk and NGOs of environmental violations in the Adani case were forwarded to me by Shri Rahul Gandhi’s office… Occasionally, I apprised Shri Rahul Gandhi of steps I had taken, and he responded positively. In fact you have yourself conveyed your concern in this regard in letters written to me,” the letter stated.
“In several cases, including the stalled GVK power project regarding the Dhari Devi temple in Himachal Pradesh, the Lavasa project in Maharashtra, the Nirma cement plant in Gujarat and in several other cases, I was given specific input to make my decision,” she wrote.
The open attack against the Gandhi family by Natarajan – who shared a unique link with them, for having been by the side of Rajiv Gandhi at his last campaign rally, and later helping identify his body that had been blown apart in a bomb attack – meant she burnt her bridges completely with the party.
After her exit from the Congress, there were reports that Natarajan was in touch with the BJP, but the party clearly did not want to take in a leader it had made the focus of its anti-UPA attacks.
Sources in the Congress said the party did not want to put the spotlight on the charges made by the BJP about the UPA government in 2014, by raising the Natarajan case, particularly amidst the latest round of elections. (File/ Express photo by Prashant Nadkar, Mumbai) 
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