EC Must Intervene in MP Rajya Sabha Nomination Row: Lok Satta Chief Jayaprakash Narayan
Hyderabad, June 11 (TNT): Lok Satta Party President Jayaprakash Narayan on Thursday termed the rejection of Congress leader Meenakshi Natarajan’s nomination for the Rajya Sabha election in Madhya Pradesh as erroneous and called for decisive intervention by the Election Commission (EC).
In a post on X, Narayan said the Returning Officer (RO) was “clearly wrong” in rejecting the nomination.
He argued that a petition submitted to a party leader seeking action against another party member over alleged misconduct or a crime does not make the party leader culpable.
A court complaint alleging that the party leader failed to act on such a representation cannot be treated as a criminal complaint against that leader, he said.
“The only complaint is that the senior party leader did not take action within the party against the other member. At worst, it was a political failure to discipline an errant member,” Narayan said.
Describing the rejection of the nomination on such grounds as “a travesty of democracy”, he urged the Election Commission to step in.
According to Narayan, if the rejection order has already been officially communicated, the election should be countermanded, the Returning Officer replaced immediately and a fresh election conducted beginning with a new nomination process.
He also sought disciplinary action against the officer concerned for rejecting the nomination on what he termed “spurious grounds”.
Referring to his role in electoral reform initiatives, Narayan said he had been at the forefront of the movement for disclosure of candidates’ backgrounds.
He noted that the Lok Satta movement’s public disclosure of the criminal records of 42 candidates from Andhra Pradesh in 1999 helped initiate the broader process of electoral transparency in the country.
He said indiscriminate use of disqualification provisions was not the way to strengthen democracy and called for greater maturity and wisdom in dealing with such issues.
“The electors elect the representatives, not the RO,” Narayan said, adding that the matter was a fit case for the Election Commission’s decisive intervention.
TNT TS
