Congress approaches Supreme Court over Meenakshi Natarajan nomination rejection

After giving a “detailed representation” to the ECI, Congress MP Abhishek Manu Singhvi said: “The Election Commission’s own law, the Representation of the People Act, has Section 33A, which requires you to disclose… this is a requirement for disclosure only. You have to disclose only those cases with a punishment of more than two years, and above all, only those cases where charges have been framed. The process of framing charges is a judicial process. A judge frames charges.”

“A private complaint may be baseless, may have no legs to stand on,” he said. “There is no criminal case merely, if I alleged something against somebody else, without a cognizance taken.”

He said that Natarajan’s nomination was rejected “on the non-existence of even cognizance, which means there is no criminal case, which she could have disclosed”. “But you have done it at the first stage, whereas the section, which I have just read for you, 33A says that after cognizance, if it is taken, there will be an investigation. After investigation, there will be a chargesheet, which is not enough. The section says after the chargesheet, the judge must frame charges; had the judge reached the stage of framing charges, she would have been obliged to disclose.”

He said the delegation pointed out to 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 power to do justice and power to right wrongs. If an RO improperly throws out a nomination paper… 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,” he said.

The senior Congress leader said ECI has sufficient time to take action against the RO’s order. “This is a completely egregious, blatant, patently unlawful, without law order, and it should be set aside immediately, it is our request.”

An EC official said the Congress’ request was being examined, however, there was no provision for review nor any such precedent. The Congress delegation asked the Commission to exercise extraordinary powers under Article 324 of the Constitution to intervene, the official said.