The Congress on Wednesday urged the Election Commission to invoke the constitutional provision that gives it powers to conduct polls to invalidate the rejection of Meenakshi Natarajan's nomination for the Rajya Sabha polls from Madhya Pradesh.
The commission has yet to publicly respond to protests against the returning officer (RO) for the Rajya Sabha polls from Madhya Pradesh, Arvind Sharma, who is also the Assembly's principal secretary, for rejecting Natarajan's nomination on the ground that she had not disclosed in her affidavit information of a criminal case against her. A poll panel source said the issue was being examined.
A Congress delegation led by general secretary (organisation) K.C. Venugopal, legal head and MP Abhishek Manu Singhvi, communications head Jairam Ramesh, general secretaries Bhupesh Baghel, Randeep Singh Surjewala and Deepa Dasmunshi, and Natarajan met all three election commissioners here.
After the meeting, Singhvi explained: "The Representation of the People Act (1951) has a Section 33A, which says that you have to disclose… only those cases, which have a punishment of more than two years, but above all only those cases where charges have been framed.... Natarajan only received a notice to come to court and tell it why cognisance should not be taken. That means the notice she received was before any cognisance was taken.... There is no criminal case merely if I allege something against somebody else, without a cognisance taken.
"The word used is 'sangyaan' in the RO’s order. Sangyaan means cognisance. There is no cognisance taken. We also told the Election Commission that they have a huge reservoir of powers under Article 324. It is a constitutional power; it is an uncircumscribed power. It is inherent power; it is the power to do justice and the power to right wrongs.... Nobody has to wait to go to court, nobody has to file an election petition and waste 3-4-5-6 years. The main body, which has Article 324, is sitting here and that reservoir of powers to do corrective justice must be exercised by them immediately, that is what we have asked for. The EC exercised these powers in (BJP-ruled) Haryana, where the RO had wrongly rejected two nominations. There is also a Gujarat precedent."
The nominations have been mired in controversy with the BJP fielding candidates for all three vacant seats in Madhya Pradesh. With its effective strength of 62 out of 230 MLAs (one was recently disqualified after a criminal conviction in April and another's election was nullified by Madhya Pradesh High Court in March), the Congress was entitled to one of the three seats.
An urgent meeting of all Congress general secretaries, in-charges and state chiefs has been called on Thursday, ahead of an expected shuffle of office-bearers. An in-charge said: "The INDIA bloc resolved to strive for the education minister's resignation. K.C. Venugopalji has already shown the intent of the party by staging a dharna outside the EC office last night. I expect protest plans on the education scams and economic issues to be discussed tomorrow. It will also be a chance for everyone to meet before the shuffle."