You can now find the Congress making its case in court. Rahul Gandhi has been very open about it, talking of ‘seat chori’ and putting it out there that the BJP and the EC were in on it to rig the field even before a vote was in the offing. It all comes down to a Congress nomination they say was turned down and an extra measure of time given to an opponent.
What set this off
It boils down to the EC in Madhya Pradesh not wanting to have any part of the papers put forward by the Congress’s Meenakshi Natarajan. According to Gandhi, she had her act together, with no cases hanging over her and every form in order, but was put in the bin on the back of a flimsy objection from the BJP.
Then you have the case of Parimal Nathwani, who Gandhi says is a Jharkhand Independent with the BJP behind him. He put in his name wrong and left out a few things he should have put in, and still, he was made to wait while he put his house in order.
Congress: the EC didn’t do its job
Gandhi has it that the party tried to sit down with the poll body and were put off at first. And when they did get in a room with them, he says, their questions were met with nothing but quiet, which only made the Congress more uneasy about the double standards at play.
He made sure to put it on social media for all to see. After ‘vote chori’ and ‘sarkar chori’, he called this one ‘seat chori’, and said the 'BJP-EC jugalbandi‘ had put an end to the contest in its cradle.
Put simply, here is what the Congress leader is alleging:
– A clean-slate Congress nomination was done away with
– The other side made a mess of it and was given the time to sort it
– The poll body put up a wall and then some
How the BJP is having it
Not so, says the BJP. Pradeep Bhandari, for one, puts the onus on the Congress. His take is that the party made a hash of Meenakshi Natarajan’s submission and is now trying to be the victim of it.
Bhandari is pointing to a 2013 ruling from the top court, where a bench led by Justice P. Sathasivam made it plain that if you don’t come clean – like on a criminal case – your nomination is up for the axe.
He even put it out there that some insider in a State run by the Congress let the cat out of the bag, and told them to look in the mirror. You won’t find a word of response to that in what we have here from the Congress.
Where do we go from here
Having not found what they wanted with the EC, the Congress has taken its grievances to the Supreme Court. They say the matter is on the docket for 12 June 2026, which will be the day to see if the recent Rajya Sabha calls hold up in law.
This is about more than a single seat. What the court has to say could be a guide for how hard the rules are to be followed and if an officer can really give someone more time to fix a mistake and have it stand up to a judge.
Why it is being made an issue of
For the Opposition, it is as much about the referee as the numbers. Gandhi’s point is that you have two candidates and two different rulebooks, and that kind of bias saps the trust right before the MLAs make their mark.
He has been at pains to say this could happen again, and for the BJP it is a simple matter to put an election in place rather than earn it. The BJP has no time for that, and will have you believe the Congress is of its own making in this dispute.
What is at stake for everyone involved
In the Rajya Sabha, the margins are thin and the procedure is everything. A disqualification or an extension can be the difference, and that is why you have both sides at each other’s throats over the fairness of it all.
There has been no word of an in-depth explanation from the EC in the way the Congress has put it. That is the rub, according to him; the BJP will tell you the law is the law.
So you have the politics of it and the law of it, with 12 June 2026 coming up. The court’s verdict may well put a new spin on how you handle things when the pressure is on.
Some of the big ones to be answered are obvious enough:
– Was there a level playing field for the errors and omissions?
– By the book, was the extension in order?
– Will the EC be able to make its case in court for either side of the story?
We will have to wait and see. In the meantime, the headlines will be written. For the rest of us, it is a test of whether the people running the show can be trusted when the stakes are this high.
