"I announce my resignation. I have not yet sent the letter, will send it after the press conference" Natarajan told reporters.
Referring to her long association with the Congress party, Jayanthi send she was a fourth generation Congress worker with Congress blood running in her veins. She said her family had been associated with the Congress for generations and so this day was extremely painful and heartrending.
"I feel that the time has come now for me to rethink my association because of what happened in the recent past. The Congress is no longer the Congress that I joined," said an 'anguished' Natarajan, who has been associated with the party for over 30 years and a Gandhi loyalist.
Jayanti said the policy of Rajiv Gandhi and Indira Gandhi was to protect the environment at all costs, and she had all through her career followed the party line, without a single blemish in her career.
As a result of following the party line of preserving the environment, and also adhering to "requests" from Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi's office, she had even stopped several big projects like Vedanta, Nirma and Adani, among others, facing the 'wrath and anger' of Cabinet colleagues who said this would hurt economic progress.
Repeating the accusations she had made in the letter to Sonia Gandhi, Jayanthi said after she was asked to resign as environment minister by then PM Manmohan Singh on December 20, 2013, on the direction of Sonia Gandhi to d 'party work'. Later she said she removed as party spokesperson, An upset Jayanthi said she had never been told the reasons for her removal despite repeated requests to meet the Congress president and Congress vice-president. "I tried to meet Rahul Gandhi 100 times," she said.
Jayanthi also alleged that Rahul Gandhi's office had subsequently planted false stories against her. "Have been subjected to a campaign of vilification, defamation, and wrong allegations against me by Rahul Gandhi's office," she said.
Jayanthi said she had been totally ignored and sidelined by the Congress party high command. "My issues are with nation high command which totally sidelined me, I have no issues with state party," she reiterated.
Referring to the 'harrowing experience", Jayanthi said there had never been any proof of wrongdoing by her. "If anything is proved, I am willing to be hanged, I am willing go to jail,"
Jayanthi said her reputation and that of her family had been vilified and she had held the press conference to set the record straight. She said she had no plans to join any other party.
http://ift.tt/1wH04lg Natarajan,Sonia Gandhi,Rahul Gandhi
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