New Delhi: The Congress on Wednesday took up with the Election Commission the issue of rejection of its Madhya Pradesh candidate Meenakshi Natarajan’s nomination for the Rajya Sabha polls, saying the order was “egregious” and should be set aside immediately.
A delegation of top party leaders, including K C Venugopal, Jairam Ramesh, Abhishek Singhvi, Vivek Tankha, Randeep Surjewala, Bhupesh Baghel and Deepa Dasmunshi, along with Natarajan, met the Commission and demanded that the decision should be reversed.
“This is a subversion of democracy….We still have full faith in constitutional institutions. That is why we are fighting this battle,” Natarajan told reporters after the Congress delegation met the EC officials.
Briefing reporters after the meeting, Singhvi said, “This delegation made a detailed representation to the EC. We have told them and demonstrated, according to us, beyond doubt and beyond any matter of controversy, that the RO (returning officer), has passed a perverse order. An order akin to likening 2 plus 2 is equal to 7.”
“Why do I say so. The Election Commission’s own law the representation of people’s act has a section 33A which states that you have to disclose only those cases which have a punishment of over two years, but above all, only those cases in which charges have been framed,” Singhvi said.
“The process of framing charges is a judicial process. A judge frames charges. As a first-year law student knows that first there is a private complaint. That private complaint may be baseless, may have no legs to stand on and the second stage is taking up cognizance by the magistrate,” he said.
Singhvi said Natarajan had only received a notice to come to the court to tell the court why cognizance should not be taken which means that the notice was received before any cognizance was taken.
Any first-year law student also knows that without cognizance no criminal case exists in the eyes of the law, he said.
“You have rejected Ms Natarajan’s nomination on even the non-existence of cognizance which means that there is no criminal case that she could have disclosed,” he said.
It is a bizarre thing that the returning officer has rejected stating that there is cognizance when there is no cognizance, he said
“We pointed out to the EC that they are having a huge reservoir of power under Article 324 of the Constitution….if an RO improperly throws out a nomination on the grounds that the colour of his hair is black or if he is resident of another state, nobody has to wait to go to court. Nobody has to file an election petition, the main body which is sitting here with powers to do corrective justice,” Singhvi said, referring to the EC.
The poll body must exercise its power immediately, he said, adding that it was done by it in the Haryana and Gujarat precedent.
The Congress hopes and trust that the EC will realise that this creates a very bad, distorted and non-level playing field that strikes at the heart of democracy. A violation of that strikes further at the heart of the basic structure of the Constitution. Therefore, we have requested for an immediate decision, Singhvi said.
“We have come on the day of withdrawal (of nominations), there is sufficient time. This is a completely egregious and blatantly unlawful order, and should be set aside immediately, is our request,” the Congress MP said.
Singhvi, who also heads the legal cell of the Congress, earlier said on X that ” the decision of the Returning Officer is indeed poor and absolutely partisan.”
He 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.
“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.
The June 18 elections for three Rajya Sabha seats in Madhya Pradesh took a dramatic turn on Tuesday when the nomination of Natarajan was rejected on charges of concealing information in the affidavit.
In an order issued by Rajya Sabha election returning officer Arvind Sharma, it was stated that after examining the available documents, it was found that Natarajan had submitted an incomplete affidavit by not mentioning a court complaint in Form 26 submitted along with nomination.
An official of the Madhya Pradesh Assembly said BJP candidate Mahesh Kewat had filed a complaint with the returning officer alleging that Natarajan had not mentioned a case filed against her in Telangana in her affidavit.
After hearing arguments from both sides, the returning officer rejected Natarajan’s nomination, according to the official.
Calling the nomination rejection a “murder of democracy”, the Congress alleged that this was not a case of ‘vote theft’, but of ‘seat theft’.
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