Jayanthi Natarajan, ministers hit out at Modi's 'Jayanthi Tax' jibe

New Delhi, Jan 13: In a press conference today, former Environment Minister

hits out at

's jibe of "Jayanthi Tax", indicating the corruption in her ministry during her tenure as the Environment minister.

Jayanthi, however, has other reasons to justify the jibe. She accuses Modi of targeting her as she had opposed the destruction of green in the BJP-led Gujarat. She further added,"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 environment."

In a veiled attack at the former Union Minister, Modi in a rally in Panaji said that the removal of Jayanthi Natarajan from the environment ministry was due to the "Jayanthi Tax". What followed was a sarcastic statement, which said:

"There was a storm over the Environment Ministry and all files were blocked. No file was moving without money. 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 was moving. Till the time that was not paid, files could not be moved in the Environment Ministry. I have never experienced it myself as I never need it but we are shocked over this. What kind of systems have they developed."

Meanwhile Natarajan said accused Modi of trying to intimidate her with his jibes and said that he would be unsuccessful. "He is only trying to intimidate me into silence and stop attacking him. But I cannot be and will not be intimidated," she said.

Speculations over corruption were rife over her tenure in the environment ministry. Later, her "resignation" move was related to the allegations from industries which accused her of holding back environment clearance projects.

Meanwhile, Digvijay Singh tweeted:

Shakeel Ahmed from Aam Aadmi Party also tweeted:

To this, Modi said that the fact that the Congress and AAP share "hand-in-glove" relation is proved by Shakeel Ahmed's tweet.

OneIndia News