Jayanthi Natarajan was born in Madras, India. She was born to Dr. C R Sundararajan and Rukmini Sundararajan. Jayanthi Natarajan is the niece of notable social worker Sarojini Varadappan. Her maternal grandfather was M. Bakthavatsalam, a prominent Congress politician and the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu between 1963 and 1967. She did her schooling from a prominent Chennai school, Sacred Heart Matriculation Higher Secondary School, Church Park. Jayanthi studied at Ethiraj College for Women before pursuing law and became a practicing advocate in Madras. Apart from her commercial practice, she also did pro bono work for a number of social organizations including the All India Women's Conference, and the legal aid board. She also worked briefly as a newscaster for Doordarshan Kendra, Madras
Political career
Congress Years
Her political career began when she was noticed by Rajiv Gandhi in the 1980s. She was first elected to the Rajya Sabha in 1986 and once again in 1992.
During the 90's Jayanthi Natarajan and other leaders from Tamil Nadu who were unhappy with Narasimha Rao decided to break away from the party. They founded the Tamil Maanila Congress under G K Moopanar. Jayanthi Natarajan resigned from the Rajya Sabha and was re-elected in 1997 as a TMC member. The TMC was allied with the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu and was a part of the United Front government in the centre. Jayanthi Natarajan was appointed Minister of State for Coal, Civil Aviation and Parliamentary Affairs in 1997.
Return to the Congress
With Moopanar's death, the TMC leaders decided to merge with the Congress. Jayanthi Natarajan was noticed by Sonia Gandhi and appointed spokesperson for the party. She replaced Mr. Jairam Ramesh as Environment Minister on 12 July 2011 in the UPA led Union Government. She served as the Minister of State for Environment and forests from 12 July 2011 to 20 December 2013. She was allegedly asked to resign from her post to work for the Congress party in the run up to the General Elections of 2014.
Also see Sahara-Birla Diaries Scandal Due to her name appearing in the Sahara Diaries amongst hundreds of politicians who had been paid for environmental clearances, Natarajan was asked by many in the Congress to resign due to accusations of corruption. This had been alluded to by Narendra Modi as "Tayanthi tax" during his 2014 election rhetoric. However, further evidence started to turn up in 2015. After the Sahara Diaries investigation Natarajan resigned from the Congress Party on 30 January 2015. In a letter written to Sonia Gandhi, Jayanti Natarajan accused the party machinery, Rahul Gandhi in particular, of having worked towards a campaign to malign her and her reputation. She also believed, according to the letter, that she was being made a scapegoat for the economic policy paralysis observed in the UPA-II government. She believed that while she took decisions of halting certain industrial and infrastructure projects at the behest of Mr. Rahul Gandhi, certain sections of the party spread rumours that she was made to resign on 20 December 2013 due to her stance on these projects. She planned to join with TMC, but noticing the strength of TMC she discarded the decision. The Congress maintained that it was the party which had asked Natarajan to resign. In September 2017, a CBI raid was carried out on her properties in Delhi and Chennai.
