Supreme Court receives late-night plea over rejection of Meenakshi Natarajan’s Rajya Sabha nomination

Congress leader Meenakshi Natarajan has filed a petition in the Supreme Court late on Wednesday night, June 10, 2026, challenging the rejection of her nomination for the Rajya Sabha elections. Her lawyer may seek urgent intervention from the court at 10:30 a.m. on Thursday.

The nomination was rejected ahead of the Rajya Sabha poll scheduled for June 18 in Madhya Pradesh. The Returning Officer accepted an objection raised by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and ruled that Natarajan had not disclosed information about a pending criminal case in Telangana in her nomination papers. The BJP argued that she had failed to mention a case related to a notice issued by a Hyderabad court in 2025.

The Congress strongly objected to the decision, calling it illegal and politically motivated. Party leaders alleged that the BJP conspired to secure a third Rajya Sabha seat in Madhya Pradesh despite not having enough numbers on its own. According to the Congress, the nomination was wrongly rejected because no criminal case is actually pending against Natarajan in a legal sense.

The party further argued that there is no evidence that any court has taken cognizance of a criminal complaint against her. It said that a previous notice from a court cannot automatically be treated as a pending criminal case that must be disclosed in the nomination form. On this basis, the Congress said the rejection of her nomination is legally unsustainable.

The Returning Officer, however, maintained that Natarajan had filed a response to the Hyderabad court notice in 2025 but did not mention the matter in Form 26. The officer said the nomination was incomplete and therefore liable to be rejected.

The BJP countered that Supreme Court guidelines require all candidates to disclose pending criminal cases in their nomination documents, and that Natarajan violated those rules by not providing the required information.

The dispute comes just days before the election in Madhya Pradesh and has heightened political tensions between the Congress and the BJP. The case is now likely to move quickly to the Supreme Court, where the legality of the rejection could become a key issue before the voting takes place.