Jayanthi’s charges explode in Cong face

• A close aide of Rajiv Gandhi, she hit Cong where it hurts most – drags Rahul, Sonia
• Former environment minister alleges she was sacked at Sonia’s behest

New Delhi/Chennai: Former Environment Minister and senior Congress leader Jayanthi Natarajan, who was considered very close to former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and also served as a party spokesperson, on Friday joined people like G K Vasan and B S Gnanadesikan of Tamil Nadu Congress to quit the party, alleging they felt slighted by the party's national leadership.

Natarajan quit a day after the publication of her letter to Sonia Gandhi (dated 5 November 2014) on Thursday. The letter casts aspersions on the character of Rahul Gandhi and alleges that he even went to the extent of “planting stories” against his own party colleagues. As she made damning allegations of the party, particularly vice president Rahul Gandhi, letting her down, the Congress party leaders quickly rose to their leader’s defence and launched counter allegations against her.

Announcing her decision at a packed media conference in Chennai, 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.

In her letter, Jayanthi has given specific instances about the Vedanta, Nirma, Adani, GVK and Lavasa projects where Rahul’s office reportedly instructed her to stall projects worth thousands of crores. But, apparently she went too far and annoyed the powers-that-be. A day before Rahul was to address the FICCI leaders, Natarajan was asked to put in her papers on December 20, 2013, by then prime minister Manmohan Singh, allegedly at the behest of Sonia Gandhi. Though it was announced that she would be doing party work, she was not assigned any work.