Chitra Subramaniam| The News Minute| January 31, 2015| 4.45 pm ISTIt is being called the single largest attack and open revolt against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi by a former member of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA). Former Union Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan’s decision to quit the party, writing a letter to Congress President and UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi and going into fair amount of detail about why she took her decision is a serious indictment of how decisions are made in the party. The letter has several damaging passages including this one: “In fact you have yourself conveyed your concern in this regards in letters written to me. In several cases including the stalled GVK power project regarding the Dhari Davi 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. Apart from this Shri Pulok Chatterji, Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister was in constant touch with me, and the officers of the Ministry in guiding the decisions to be taken by the Ministry at that time.â€There are two obvious questions. Lawmakers are within their right to send suggestions to ministers but a note from Rahul Gandhi to a Congress minister is a signal with extraordinary gravitas not accorded to all. Her letter makes it clear that she received more than one mails - what were the precise requests from him and who were the messengers?Additionally, were there any other considerations other than good will? The second question that begs an answer is did Natarajan violate rules under pressure from the Congress party’s High Command? She also writes about “directives†from Rahul Gandhi in the Vedanta and Adani cases and how this earned her the wrath of her cabinet colleagues adding that her decision to deny environmental clearances were later upheld by the courts. There will be more than red-faces if her allegations are proved. Her letter lists issues she says have caused her anguish and in the absence of a response from the Congress high command and Rahul Gandhi, she has decided to ask the questions in public. Here are three issues which readers of Indian politics in general and New Delhi politics in particular could note.The methodJayanthi Natarajan’s decision to share her letter with the media (The Hindu) and later at a press conference and closing the day with interviews to national networks is the work of a trained professional. Her tone is neither accusatory nor weak - it is matter of fact and firm. This finesse is neither bought nor sold – it is learnt and observed on the job. She has left no doubt that if push comes to shove she has what it takes to back up everything she has written. There is talk of e-mails with instructions. If true, they could be damning. If untrue, Natarajan will be damned into oblivion. Knowing how political parties work she would not have embarked on this journey if her facts were tendentious. She is best placed to know her arguments are only as strong as their weakest link. It takes three things to withstand the onslaught to which she will be subjected to in the coming days – intellectual and emotional stamina and clarity about the path she has chosen. Natarajan has been there and done it several times before. She knows which lever to press in Delhi for the kind of reaction she expects. As a prominent spokesperson for the party who has been relied upon to bat when the chips are down (she makes a reference to this in her letter), she also knows how the media works in India’s capital, who speaks to whom, where plans are hatched and plants engineered or embedded. Having been at the receiving end of a concerted effort to paint her as the villain of the piece, Natarajan knows who the players are and she has allowed them to speak for a year. The responseIt is kicking in. Within hours of her letter, Congress leader Anand Sharma told the media she took files home, they had to be fetched from Chennai after she left the ministry and business persons had complained to him about bottlenecks in the environment ministry routed through Chennai. In the melee it was found that one file had to go to the washroom and that it where it was found! In what can only be described as a splendid auto-goal, Congress spokespeople have also said Natarajan is the subject of investigations by the country’s top sleuths the Central Bureau of investigation (CBI) and that she is dishonest, opportunist and ambitious. The last accusation of ambition reeks of misogyny - ambition and risk is what brought human beings out of caves. But so much information in the public domain so soon is not intelligent defence and it could well result in Rahul Gandhi being drawn into the ambit of the investigation if the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) decides to act on the matter to ensure that due process is restored in governance procedure. A spokesperson for the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) has jumped into the fray saying Natarajan has to produce the evidence and the parvenu and the uninformed have trained their guns on her. Mercifully, no one has said her letter is a photocopy of the original, but these are early hours. The person and her journeyHas Natarajan taken a risk? Yes, a studied one. A lawyer by training and a member of one of south India’s most illustrious families, Natarajan’s association with the Congress party is not three decades old as some commentators have said. Her grandfather M. Bhaktavatsalam was a stalwart of India’s freedom struggle. He was arrested during the Quit India Movement and released in 1944 after spending two years in prison. He led the Indian National Congress in the 1950s and served as the Chief Minister of Madras Presidency (1963 to 1967) Natarajan’s aunt Sarojini Varadappan was 21 when her father M. Bhaktavatsalam was arrested. Varadappan had many breaks in her education as girls were not allowed to travel to public institutions to study or sit for exams. She was home schooled and later secured a master’s in Political Science from Mysore University. Varadappan completed her thesis at the age of 80. She was actively involved in the Congress Seva Dal in Madras and pursued the study of Hindi as was the practice among families closely associated with the freedom movement. Varadappan was multitalented – music, dance, philophy, socialwork were all close to her heart and she and her father Bhaktavatsalam are household names among the cognoscenti in Chennai. Natarajan has grown up with politics and the sounds and struggles of India’s freedom movement. Her loyalty to the Congress Party comes from there, the party which her family led, especially in the south. Beyond accusations of timing and motive, the one question Natarajan will have to address is if loyalty to the Congress party overrode what was lawful. There is a passage in her letter where she says: “So in my decision-making I have factored in the party line despite all criticisms against me and therefore several decisions of mine were expressly overruled by the Prime Minister.†This is a confusing phrase. She told news networks she was not whistling in the dark and could back up all her statements. Natarajan has been there before. She has been economical with the truth as a spokesperson when necessary and silent when she should have spoken up. In other words, she understands the media, the government’s dirty tricks departments and for now, holds several cards very close to her chest. Natarajan joined the Congress in the 1980s as a prominent member of Rajiv Gandhi’s team and was made a Rajya Sabha in 1986. She was re-elected to the Upper House in 1992, 1997 and 2008. This is not the first time this fourth generation Congress leader has left the party. In 1996, Congress leader from Tamil Nadu GK Moopanar floated a new party called the Tamil Maanila Congress, in protest against the national wing's decision to align with the AIADMK during its polls. Moopanar's opposition was against Narasimha Rao, and when the differences could not be thawed, he quit the party. Protesting, two other Congress members along with Moopanar joined this new regional party - one was P Chidambaram and the other was Jayanthi Natarajan. If this controversy blows away like many others, it will indict more than just the high command. Root and branch changes of environmental projects happen over time, they require hundreds of signatures and an equal number of approvals. Natarajan’s next steps will be closely watched, by her friends and her foes.