The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed Congress leader Meenakshi Natarajan’s plea challenging rejection of her nomination papers for the Rajya Sabha election from Madhya Pradesh.
A Bench comprising Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and Atul S Chandurkar, however, said it has not observed anything on the merits of the case.
The Bench said she was free to file an election petition in the Madhya Pradesh High Court.
All three BJP candidates from the state were declared elected unopposed on Thursday.
“However erroneous the decision may be, once a nomination is rejected, the remedy ordinarily lies elsewhere. Is there any judgment of this Court where we have interfered at that stage?” the Bench asked senior counsel AM Singhvi, who represented Natarajan.
Singhvi contended that Article 32 of the Constitution – under which a person is entitled to directly approach the Supreme Court for protection or enforcement of fundamental rights — can be invoked to cure “glaring and manifest” errors in the rejection of nomination by the Returning Officer.
However, the top court refused to exercise its writ jurisdiction under Article 32 citing the Constitutional bar under Article 329 according to which no election to either House of Parliament or a State Legislature can be challenged, except through an Election Petition.
“If this court accepts such arguments to find out glaring cases which are required to be interfered under Article 32 or Article 226, and the other sets of cases, where the rejection is not so improper prima facie to relegate them to election petitions, this court would be reading some principle which is not provided for under Article 329.
“We are afraid that any such interpretation that in some of the matters this court can interfere while leaving some others to avail the remedy of the election tribunal cannot be encouraged,” Justice Mishra said, dismissing Natarajan’s petition.
