NEW DELHI: A day after Meenakshi Natarajan’s nomination for the Rajya Sabha was rejected, the Congress is set to file a petition on the Election Commission’s portal on Wednesday.In the event of no response from the poll panel, the party is preparing to move the Supreme Court challenging the decision, news agency ANI reported, citing sources.“The Congress is preparing to file a petition on the portal by 10:30 PM tonight, in the event that no response is received from the Central Election Commission,” sources told ANI.“Preparations are underway to mention the matter before the Supreme Court tomorrow morning,” they added.Earlier in the day, a delegation of senior Congress leaders, including KC Venugopal, Randeep Surjewala, Jairam Ramesh, Deepa Dasmunshi, Vivek Tankha and Abhishek Singhvi, met Election Commission officials in New Delhi and argued that Natarajan’s nomination had been wrongly rejected.They urged the poll panel to immediately reverse the rejection of its Rajya Sabha candidate Meenakshi Natarajan’s nomination from Madhya Pradesh, calling the decision ‘egregious’ and ‘blatantly unlawful’.“The order rejecting Natarajan’s nomination is egregious, blatantly unlawful and must be set aside immediately,” the Congress told the poll body.Earlier on Tuesday, Natarajan’s nomination was rejected by the Returning Officer in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly on allegations that she failed to disclose details of a case in Telangana in her election affidavit.BJP leaders objected, alleging that information relating to a pending matter had been concealed.Following the meeting with the Election Commission, Congress leader Meenakshi Natarajan said the party had faith in constitutional institutions and would continue to pursue the matter through legal and democratic channels.“The Election Commission has heard us. We are fighting this battle because we still have faith in constitutional institutions,” Natarajan told reporters.The rejection of Natarajan’s nomination has turned the tables for the Congress in Madhya Pradesh.The BJP, which holds 164 seats in the 230-member Assembly, was already assured of winning two of the three Rajya Sabha seats. The Congress, with 64 MLAs, had sufficient numbers to elect Natarajan to the third seat.With her nomination rejected, the BJP’s third candidate, Mahesh Kewat, is now in a much stronger position, raising the possibility that the party could win all three Rajya Sabha seats unless the Congress secures relief from the Election Commission or the courts.Congress leaders have accused the BJP of engineering a ‘constitutional conspiracy’ to capture the third seat despite lacking the numbers for a straightforward victory, while the BJP insists that election officials merely followed legal requirements regarding the disclosure of pending cases.
