Natarajan’s Rajya Sabha nomination rejection a conspiracy: Siddaramaiah

Former Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Wednesday targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi, claiming that the election machinery under his watch had “illegally” rejected the nomination of Congress candidate Meenakshi Natarajan for the Rajya Sabha election from Madhya Pradesh.

Alleging that the BJP used the election machinery to reject the Congress candidate’s nomination, he 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.

“It is peak irony that, on the day the BJP is celebrating PM Modi’s supposed long stay in power as a cooked-up milestone for Indian democracy, the election machinery under his watch has illegally rejected the nomination of Congress candidate Meenakshi Natarajan for the Rajya Sabha election from Madhya Pradesh,” Siddaramaiah said.

“This is the real condition of democracy under Modi. The rejection of Natarajan’s nomination 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.

“When those attempts started failing, and Congress MLAs stood united, the BJP used the election machinery to directly reject the Congress candidate’s nomination,” he alleged.

The grounds cited for rejecting her nomination were “completely illegal,” he further claimed.

“There is no criminal case against Natarajan in the eyes of the law. 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 said.