So returning officer is right and Meenakshi Natarajan was wrong? Not really

A lady filed a complaint of inappropriate behaviour against a Congress worker in 2022 in Telangana. Three years later, the Congress made Meenakshi Natarajan — former Lok Sabha MP and a resident of Madhya Pradesh — in-charge of Telangana. The lady went to court and filed a complaint against several people including Natarajan, named at number 4 for ostensibly taking no action against the man she had accused. A Telangana court sent notices to the people named, including Natarajan, in September 2025. The court is yet to take cognisance of the case and the charges are yet to be framed.

Now, hear Natarajan herself. The returning officer for the upcoming Rajya Sabha election, she claimed, had held that she had concealed information about the ‘notice’ in Form 26, which she had filled as part of her Rajya Sabha nomination papers. Details required in the form ranged from the political party she sought to represent, her serial number in the electoral roll, information about Income Tax, PAN, properties and personal information like her phone number and email ID.

The form also sought details about a) details of pending criminal cases against her and b) details of cases in which she may have been convicted by a court of law.

Form 26, she claimed, did not seek any detail about legal notices or summons sent to her. There was no column either for providing details of notices or cases which courts had not taken cognisance of. So, she asked, how was she at fault?

Let us now turn to the Supreme Court hearing on Friday, 12 June. A Bench of Justices P.K. Mishra and A.S. Chandurkar held that election-related petitions are not maintainable by courts after commencement of the election process. The Bench said it was not inclined to entertain Natarajan’s plea in view of the law laid down in the 1952 judgement in N.P. Ponnuswamy vs Returning Officer, that the appropriate remedy in election matters is an election petition filed before the appropriate high court.

Senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi argued in vain that the court had to jurisdiction to step in if the returning officer made a gross error. Natarajan, he pointed out, was seeking relief to participate in the biennial election to the Rajya Sabha. Her appeal was to establish her right to contest. She did not file the petition asking the Supreme Court to declare her the winner. If the electors chose to vote against her, she would lose, Singhvi argued. The court could direct the Election Commission to accept her nomination and allow her to contest in the election scheduled for Wednesday, 18 June.

But the returning officer declared the three BJP candidates elected unopposed from Madhya Pradesh. In the election to the Rajya Sabha, elected members of state Assemblies cast their preferential vote and winners are decided by virtue of a formula. Very often candidates, falling short of the required number of votes, buy votes, a phenomenon widely known; which is why political parties often herd their MLAs into resorts so that rival parties are not able to contact them. 

The Election Commission and the courts are aware of this reality and yet, this does not seem to bother them. The Commission has never been directed by the judiciary to tighten rules so that the integrity of an election is not compromised.

Time and again, however, the Supreme Court has refused to interfere in the electoral process on the ground that once the process is set in motion, the Election Commission alone was the appropriate authority to remedy the situation. Once the election is over, the only recourse for aggrieved parties and candidates is to file election petitions, which on paper must be decided within six months but are seldom settled before four or five years. 

In an editorial on 12 June, The Hindu pointed out that Section 33A of the Representation of the People Act required disclosure only of those cases that carry a punishment of two years or more and, above all, only of those cases in which charges have been framed.

'Framing of charges is a judicial step, which follows the filing of a charge sheet. The RO’s position that material facts had been concealed and the nomination papers were incomplete is not merely a misinterpretation of the law, but an insult to common sense. Going by that logic, a candidate could be disqualified for failing to list notices of traffic violations too,' the editorial noted.

So, was the Supreme Court right in dismissing her petition? Natarajan, a steadfast and stoic Gandhian, reacted by saying, “This is not a personal setback. This is a setback to democracy and the Constitution of India... I said this in the beginning that members of the Election Commission were compromised. When our people went to the Election Commission, they did not answer us for 48 hours. The Supreme Court at least heard our plea and gave a verdict..."