Setback for Congress: SC dismisses Meenakshi Natarajan's plea against Rajya Sabha nomination rejection

The Supreme Court dismissed on 12 June the writ petition filed by Congress member Meenakshi Natarajan challenging the rejection of her Rajya Sabha candidature from Madhya Pradesh.

The top court gave Natarajan liberty to raise the issue in an election petition filed in terms of the Representation of the People Act.

A bench comprising Justice Prashant Kumar Mishra and Justice AS Chandurkar declined the exercise of its writ jurisdiction citing the Constitutional bar as per Article 329, legal news website Live Law said. The writ petition was accordingly dismissed as non-maintainable, it said.

The bench rejected the argument of the petitioner that Article 32 can be invoked to cure "glaring and manifest" errors in the rejection of nomination.

“If the Court accepts such arguments to find out glaring cases which are required to be interfered under Article 32/226, and the other sets of cases, where the rejection is not so improper prima facie to relegate them to election petitions, this Court would be reading some principle which is not provided for under Article 329. We are afraid that any such interpretation that in some of the matters this Court can interfere while leaving some others to avail the remedy of the election tribunal cannot be encouraged,” the court said.

Natarajan's nomination was rejected by Returning Officer Arvind Sharma on 9 June on the ground that she did not disclose in her Form 26 affidavit a private complaint filed against her in a Telangana Court despite receiving a summons on it.

In the petition before Supreme Court, Natarajan alleged that the Returning Officer acted illegally, arbitrarily and with bias.

During the hearing on Friday, Senior Advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, for Natarajan, submitted that as per Section 33A of the Representation of the People Act, only the criminal cases where charges have been framed by the trial court need to be disclosed in the nomination. Singhvi argued that as per Section 223 of the Bharatiya Nagarika Suraksha Sanhita, the potential accused has to be sent a notice before taking cognizance on a private complaint.

(With inputs from Live Law)