In what has become a contentious political episode in Bhopal, on June 9, the returning officer for the Rajya Sabha elections slated for June 18 cancelled the nomination papers of Congress candidate Meenakshi Natarajan, leading to a BJP candidate getting elected instead.
The Congress has said it will appeal against the cancellation of nomination while BJP chief minister Mohan Yadav described the development as the result of strife within the Congress.
The preceding three days to the nomination cancellation had witnessed significant political build-up. Elections were to be held for three Rajya Sabha seats in Madhya Pradesh. Two of these were to go to the BJP and one to the Congress, as per their numbers in the legislative assembly.
While the BJP fielded Tarun Chugh and Rajneesh Agarwal as candidates, the Congress put Natarajan, All India Congress Committee (AICC) in-charge for Telangana, in the fray.
On June 8, the BJP announced it would put up a third candidate—Keshav Kewat, chairperson of the MP fishermen’s welfare board—in the contest even though the party did not have the numbers to win the seat. The game plan appeared to be potential cross-voting.
An alarmed Congress decided to move its state MLAs to Bengaluru in party-ruled Karnataka. A chartered plane arrived in Bhopal and the MLAs boarded the flight for Bengaluru. But they returned soon afterwards as news arrived that Natarajan’s candidature had been rejected. What were the reasons?
On June 9, the day for scrutiny, Arvind Sharma, principal secretary of the Vidhan Sabha and returning officer for the Rajya Sabha polls, issued a notice to Natarajan about an ongoing court case in Hyderabad regarding which no mention was apparently made in her nomination papers. The BJP, in its complaint, had raked up the case.
The returning officer asked Natarajan to reply to the notice by the evening of June 9. Lawyers representing the Congress told the officer that the matter was not an FIR as yet, and hence there was no need to mention it in the nomination form.
In October 2025, a private complaint (no. 4472/2025) had been filed against Natarajan in a Hyderabad court in which a compensation claim was made. Natarajan had replied to the court notice. The sections in the case include Section 356 (defamation) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS).
The returning officer mentioned that the aforesaid section carried a punishment of two years. The officer, while rejecting the candidature, said that the Congress candidate’s affidavit had withheld information about the case even though notices had been issued to her in it.
The returning officer had first scrutinised the forms of the three BJP candidates and then the Congress nominee. When the BJP candidates’ forms were looked into, no objections were raised by anyone, including the Congress. When scrutiny of Natarajan’s papers started, BJP leaders filed the objection that the court case had not been mentioned.
The Congress termed the cancellation of nomination as “murder of democracy” and said it would challenge it legally. Congress MP and senior lawyer Vivek Tankha said he had seen Natarajan’s papers and that there was no need for her to mention the court case in her nomination.
“There is no FIR. A notice had been served under Section 223 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), to which the candidate has replied in court. Earlier, there was vote chori, and now there is seat chori,” Tankha said, adding that he has asked the party leadership to allow a direct appeal in the Supreme Court.
Legal experts said a candidate is usually given a chance to rectify mistakes, if any, in their forms—which was apparently not facilitated for Natarajan.
Senior Congress leaders Jairam Ramesh, K.C. Venugopal, Sachin Pilot and Bhupesh Baghel went to the Election Commission (EC) office in New Delhi on June 9 but were apparently denied permission to meet the chief election commissioner. The leaders sat on a dharna outside the office. Later, the EC asked them to seek a meeting as a delegation.
Additionally, MP Congress president Jitu Patwari, Leader of the Opposition Umang Singhar and Congress state in-charge Harish Chaudhry sat on an all-night dharna outside the chief electoral officer’s office in Bhopal.
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