Supreme Court Rejects Meenakshi Natarajan’s Plea Over Rajya Sabha Nomination

The Supreme Court’s June 12 dismissal of Congress leader Meenakshi Natarajan’s challenge has put the spotlight on whether an election affidavit can demand wider criminal-case disclosures than the statute it is meant to implement.

What triggered the dispute

Natarajan had challenged the Returning Officer’s decision rejecting her nomination for the Rajya Sabha election from Madhya Pradesh.

The Returning Officer held that she had failed to disclose, in her Form 26 affidavit, a pending criminal complaint against her and had thereby suppressed material information.

The criminal complaint was instituted in 2025.

It alleged that Natarajan failed to take appropriate action against a party leader accused of misconduct.

The case has raised important questions about the scope of disclosure obligations imposed on electoral candidates and the constitutional remedies available when nomination papers are rejected.

Those questions go beyond one candidate’s nomination because they involve the relationship between the Representation of the People Act, 1951, the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961, and the contents of Form 26.

How candidate disclosure law evolved

The statutory obligation requiring electoral candidates to disclose criminal antecedents is of relatively recent origin.

Parliament inserted Section 33-A into the Representation of the People Act, 1951, or ROPA, in 2002.

That amendment followed the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Union of India v. Association for Democratic Reforms (2002).

In that decision, the court held that mandatory disclosure did not impose an additional qualification for contesting elections.

The court also held that such disclosure did not conflict with the scheme of ROPA.

Instead, the court found that disclosure advanced the electorate’s right to make an informed choice and strengthened the purity of the electoral process.

After the judgment, the Election Commission was directed to mandate disclosure of specified criminal antecedents, assets, liabilities and educational qualifications through an affidavit.

The government then introduced Sections 33-A, 33-B, 75-A and 125-A into ROPA.

It also amended the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961, prescribing Form 26 as the affidavit to accompany every nomination paper.

Form 26 was initially aligned with Section 33-A.

A significant departure occurred in 2018.

Where Form 26 diverged

Paragraph 5 of Form 26 was amended to require disclosure of all pending criminal cases.

Section 33-A, however, mandates disclosure only of those cases involving offences punishable with imprisonment of two years or more in which charges have already been framed by a competent court.

This apparent divergence between the parent statute and delegated legislation lies at the heart of the present controversy.

The disclosure requirement is operationalised through Rule 4A of the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961.

Rule 4A requires every candidate to file an affidavit in Form 26 along with the nomination papers.

Rule 4A, however, is described as a procedural mechanism for implementing Section 33-A.

On that view, it cannot become an independent source of substantive obligations.

Yet the 2018 amendment to Form 26 appears to do precisely that.

Paragraph 5 now requires disclosure of all pending criminal cases, regardless of whether charges have been framed.

The constitutional question therefore extends beyond Natarajan’s candidature.

The issue is whether delegated legislation, under the guise of prescribing the manner of disclosure, can enlarge a substantive statutory obligation.

That question matters because Form 26 is the affidavit that accompanies every nomination paper, while Section 33-A is the statutory provision that defines the disclosure obligation.

If Form 26 is read as wider than Section 33-A, the candidate’s duty may be measured by an amended form rather than only by the statutory threshold of framed charges in specified cases.

Why constitutional remedies are at issue

The case also raises a separate question about when constitutional courts can intervene after the election process has begun.

While describing Article 32, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar famously called it the “heart and soul” of the Constitution.

However, while dismissing Natarajan’s challenge to the rejection of her nomination, the Supreme Court relied on the Constitution Bench decision in N.P. Ponnuswami v. Returning Officer (1952).

Ponnuswami held that Article 329(b) bars judicial intervention in electoral disputes once the election process has commenced.

Under that doctrine, an election petition remains the exclusive post-election remedy.

Natarajan’s case exposes the limits of that doctrine.

The question is whether constitutional remedies under Articles 32 and 226 should remain unavailable even where the Returning Officer’s decision is alleged to be manifestly arbitrary or patently without jurisdiction.

Ponnuswami’s rationale was to prevent judicial intervention from interrupting the electoral process.

It was not framed as a rule to insulate totally perverse administrative decisions.

What remains open after dismissal

Natarajan has been granted liberty to challenge her rejection through an election petition under Section 100 of ROPA.

Even so, the broader constitutional question survives.

That surviving question is whether constitutional courts should remain powerless in the face of patent arbitrariness during the electoral process.

The case may therefore require the Supreme Court to revisit Ponnuswami and clarify the scope of constitutional court intervention during elections.

The disclosure issue also remains significant because the controversy turns on whether Form 26’s 2018 wording can validly require disclosure of all pending criminal cases when Section 33-A speaks only of cases involving offences punishable with imprisonment of two years or more where charges have already been framed by a competent court.

For candidates, the practical point is that Rule 4A requires the filing of Form 26 with nomination papers, while the legal controversy is whether that form can impose obligations beyond the parent statute.

For voters, the statutory history matters because the original disclosure framework was justified as a way to advance the electorate’s right to make an informed choice and strengthen the purity of the electoral process.

The present controversy sits at the intersection of those two concerns: the voter’s interest in disclosure and the candidate’s challenge to a rejection based on an allegedly wider affidavit requirement.

Vanshaj Azad is an advocate based in New Delhi and is presently working as a Law Clerk-cum-Research Associate at the Supreme Court of India.

Source: The Hindu