Former minister Jayanthi Natarajan booked by CBI, premises searched

NEW DELHI: The CBI searched on Saturday the Chennai home of Jayanthi Natarajan, the previous UPA government’s environment minister, over allegations of unlawfully diverting 55.59 hectares of forests in Jharkhand for “non-forest” use.

The agency registered FIR against the former minister for her 2012 decision that cleared a private company’s previously rejected proposal for projects in a forest reserved for elephants.

The 63-year-old lawyer-politician from Tamil Nadu has been accused of “criminal conspiracy” and abuse of her official position in collusion with the mining company — Electrosteel Casting Limited (ECL).

The former Congress leader, who resigned from the party in 2015, allegedly went out of the way to approve a proposal that was rejected by her predecessor, Jairam Ramesh, as well as the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC).

The FIR also names ECL and its managing director, Umang Kejriwal.

Besides Chennai, searches were conducted in New Delhi, Kolkata, Ranchi and the company’s office in Rajgangpur, an industrial town in Odisha’s Sundargarh district.

The corruption allegations first surfaced during Natarajan’s one-and-a-half year tenure from July 2011 until she quit in December 2013 to work for the party before the general elections next year. Natarajan had denied the charges before.