Bengaluru, 10 June

Targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi, former chief minister Siddaramaiah on Wednesday claimed that the election machinery had “illegally” rejected the nomination of Congress candidate Meenakshi Natarajan for the Rajya Sabha election from Madhya Pradesh.

Siddaramaiah said it was “peak irony” that this happened on the day the BJP was celebrating Modi’s “supposed long stay in power as a cooked-up milestone for Indian democracy.”

The upcoming elections to three Rajya Sabha seats in Madhya Pradesh took a dramatic turn in Bhopal on Tuesday after Natarajan’s nomination was rejected on charges of concealing information about a case in her affidavit.

“This is the real condition of democracy under Modi. The rejection is not a routine scrutiny decision. It is a blatant illegality and a clear political conspiracy,” the Congress Working Committee member posted on X.

Noting that the BJP had the numbers to win only two Rajya Sabha seats from Madhya Pradesh, the former CM said the party had nevertheless fielded a third candidate and then attempted horse-trading by allegedly offering huge sums of money to Congress legislators.

Furthermore, the grounds cited for rejecting her nomination were “completely illegal”.

“There is no criminal case against Natarajan. A private complaint does not become a criminal case unless the court takes cognisance of it. A mere notice from a court is not a criminal case and need not be disclosed,” he stated.

“Whether by manipulating voters, breaking parties, buying loyalty, misusing institutions, or stealing seats, the BJP’s aim is the same: to create artificial numbers in Parliament. These artificial numbers are needed to pass anti-democratic and anti-constitutional laws without resistance,” he concluded.

Similarly, Congress MLC Ramesh Babu stated that the rejection “reflects a clear collusion between the Election Commission of India (ECI) and the BJP”.

The KPCC Media Wing Chairman added that the action supresses political competition and was therefore undermining democracy.