Top Congress leaders meet EC, says Meenakshi Natarajan's RS nomination wrongly rejected

NEW DELHI: Top Congress leaders met the Election Commission on Wednesday, alleging that the nomination papers of Meenakshi Natarajan, its Rajya Sabha candidate from Madhya Pradesh, were wrongly rejected.

A delegation of top party leaders, including K C Venugopal, Randeep Surjewala, Jairam Ramesh, Deepa Dasmunshi, Vivek Tankha and Abhishek Singhvi, along with Meenakshi Natarajan, met the commission and demanded that the decision should be reversed.

They contended that no case is pending against Natarajan as no court has yet taken cognisance of a private complaint filed against her.

Singhvi, who also heads the legal cell of the Congress, said on X that " the decision of the Returning Officer is indeed poor and absolutely partisan." Singhvi said he spoke to Natarajan and several other senior Congress leaders on Tuesday after he learnt of this "most remarkable and astonishing rejection" of her nomination papers by the Returning Officer.

"This is, on the face of it, patently and blatantly illegal because no criminal case, in the eyes of the law, exists against Ms Natarajan," he said in a video message on X.

"This is because, in a private complaint, which anyone can file against anyone, no criminal case comes into existence unless and until the magistrate or the concerned judge takes cognisance," he said in the message.

"At the highest, in the present case, a court has only issued a notice to her on a private complaint well before that court has taken cognisance, and indeed, the issue of cognisance is yet to be decided after hearing her by that court. So, where is the question of a criminal case which she had to disclose? "This is well established by Indian jurisprudence, including a high court judgment directly on point. It is not possible that the Returning Officer took an independent, objective, fair, and impartial stance; otherwise, there is no way in law her nomination could have been rejected," he said.

"I hope and trust that the Election Commission in Delhi, the central body, will exercise its inherent, administrative, and superior powers to reverse this decision or order. Otherwise, it would be a very serious violation of the level-playing-field principle. It would create a highly skewed system in a democratic election, thereby affecting democracy and the basic structure itself," Singhvi said.

"There is still time, since today is the last day for withdrawal. No one can, and should, in a true democracy, be denied even the right to nominate oneself for the Rajya Sabha in this manner," he said.