The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed Congress leader Meenakshi Natarajan’s petition challenging the rejection of her nomination from Madhya Pradesh for the June 18 Rajya Sabha poll.A Bench of Justice PK Mishra and Justice AS Chandurkar, however, said she was free to file an election petition in the Madhya Pradesh High Court.All three BJP candidates for the Rajya Sabha 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, could 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.The Bench emphasised that whenever the top court’s jurisdiction under Article 32, or that of a High Court under Article 226 has been sought to be invoked during the process of elections, it has repeatedly declined interference due to the constitutional mandate of Article 329(b).The order came after senior advocates Mukul Rohatgi and DS Naidu — representing BJP candidates Rajneesh Kumar Agrawal and Mahesh Kewat — and the Election Commission, respectively, submitted that Natarajan’s petition under Article 32 was not maintainable as the right to contest an election was only a statutory right and not a fundamental right. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the Madhya Pradesh Government, supported the arguments of the EC and the BJP leaders.A former Lok Sabha MP from Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh, Natarajan is currently the All India Congress Committee in-charge of Telangana. Her candidature was rejected on June 9 by returning officer and Madhya Pradesh Assembly Principal Secretary Arvind Sharma following objections raised Mahesh Kewat and others who alleged that her election affidavit did not disclose the details of a case pending before an Additional Judicial Magistrate in Hyderabad.The complaint filed by former Congress worker A Srilatha in 2025 made allegations of molestation against a man and accused Natarajan and others of failing to take action as senior party functionaries despite repeated complaints.The returning officer’s order noted that Natarajan had responded to a notice issued by a Hyderabad court in October 2025 but did not mention the matter in Form 26 submitted with her nomination papers. Sharma rejected her candidature holding that her affidavit was incomplete.She had contended that the rejection was legally unsustainable as no criminal case existed against Natarajan since no court had yet taken cognisance of the private complaint filed against her and that a pre-cognisance notice did not constitute a pending criminal case requiring mandatory disclosure.However, BJP leaders told the returning officer that the Supreme Court’s guidelines on mandatory disclosure required all candidates to declare pending criminal cases in their affidavits accompanying nomination papers and that Natarajan’s non-disclosure went against the top court’s mandatory guidelines.