Supreme Court dismisses Congress leader's plea on Rajya Sabha nomination rejection

Supreme Court Friday dismissed Congress candidate Meenakshi Natarajan’s petition challenging rejection of her nomination for Rajya Sabha elections from Madhya Pradesh, refusing to carve out an exception from the judicially well-settled principle that bars courts from entertaining election disputes after commencement of the poll process.

“The remedy is filing of an election petition” to challenge the election of the returned candidate, said a partial working day bench of Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and A S Chandurkar, which delivered the verdict after senior advocate A M Singhvi, for Natarajan, made a strong, although unsuccessful, bid to persuade the court to carve out an exception to the general rule and test the validity of the returning officer’s decision.

After an hour-long proceeding, during which senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi for the BJP candidate whose election was facilitated by Natarajan’s disqualification and solicitor general Tushar Mehta for MP govt cited a judgment where SC had refused to entertain a similar plea against rejection of nomination papers, the bench said the SC or HC cannot entertain writ petitions in exercise of their jurisdictions under Articles 32 or 226 of the Constitution. Once the election process commences with the notification of polls.

Natarajan’s nomination papers were rejected as she failed to disclose a pending criminal case based on a private complaint in her election affidavit. Singhvi said on the private complaint, the trial court has only issued summonses to her and that no cognisance has been taken. The complaint was originally not against Natarajan and claimed her name was added three years later after she was made AICC in-charge for Telangana.

Singhvi said the RP Act requires a candidate to disclose in his poll affidavit only such cases where a chargesheet has been filed and charges have been framed. This was contested in unison by Rohatgi, Mehta and advocate Kanu Agrawal, who said since 2018, it has been mandatory to disclose all pending criminal cases, including those where chargesheets have not been filed or charges have not been framed.

The bench refused to enter the political thicket and brushed aside Singhvi’s charge of grave mala fide against EC and said, “The law is well-settled in a catena of judgments starting from SC’s six-judge bench judgment in N P Ponnuswami case in 1952 and has been consistently followed without any dilution that the jurisdiction of SC and HCs are barred from entertaining petitions relating to poll disputes once the election process commences. ”