While the Congress is up in arms against the cancellation of the Rajya Sabha nomination of Meenakshi Natarajan from Madhya Pradesh (MP), The Statesman has learned that the ammunition for the rejection was provided to the BJP by senior actors of the Congress party. It was an insider job, sources told The Statesman.
Earlier, senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader from MP, Kailash Vijayvargiya, had hinted that the documents that caused Natarajan’s nomination to be cancelled came from Telangana Congress leaders. BRS leader Harish Rao too had hinted in this direction. But, that is just half the picture.
Reacting to the matter, Tehseen Poonawalla took to X. “What happened to Meenakshi Natarajan wrt her Rajya Sabha nomination is terrible, absolutely terrible. Unfortunate that the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India did not interfere. The Congress High command must investigate and hold accountable who in Telengana & MP Congress colluded!,” he wrote.
What happened to Meenakshi Natarajan wrt her Rajya Sabha nomination is terrible, absolutely terrible. Unfortunate that the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India did not interfere. The Congress High command must investigate and hold accountable who in Telengana & MP Congress colluded!
— Tehseen Poonawalla Official 🇮🇳 (@tehseenp) June 12, 2026
According to highly placed sources in the Congress, the roots of the matter go back to a clash of ideologies, thinking and personalities between Meenakshi Natarajan, who was the favoured pick of Rahul Gandhi for the Rajya Sabha seat, and the top leadership of Telangana, including chief minister A Revanth Reddy.
In 2025, Meenakshi Natarajan was appointed as the All India Congress Committee (AICC) Telangana incharge. “She is a Gandhian. She is a simple person. Confrontation between Natarajan and Reddy was inevitable. See, Revanth has publicly endorsed Adolf Hitler. So, one can understand the ideological tiff between the two,” a senior Congress leader told The Statesman.
Recently, the Telangana chief minister had courted controversy with his statement that Hyderabad Disaster Response and Asset Protection Agency (HYDRAA) was named so since Hydra was “Adolf Hitler’s favourite word”.
“Hydra, the word is Hitler’s favourite word. His core team was called Hydra, which could assassinate anyone. So, I have taken inspiration from Hitler and named it HYDRAA,” he had said at a conclave in Bengaluru.
Congress sources added that information about the case against Natarajan was passed on via a close aide of Reddy to the son of a senior Congress leader in Madhya Pradesh. The two are close friends. This person then passed the documents to his father, who in turn provided then to the BJP.
“Now, what is the Madhya Pradesh part of the drama? Documents travelled via a close aide of Reddy to his friend in Madhya Pradesh, who is the son of one of the tallest Congress leaders of the state. This senior leader then furnished the case documents to the BJP. In MP, the grudge was not so much against Natarajan as against Rahul Gandhi’s ‘high-handedness’. The grudge was how and why did Rahul Gandhi make Natarajan Rajya Sabha candidate from MP without consulting the old guard,” a Congress leader from MP told The Statesman.
Meanwhile, Friday, in a setback, the Supreme Court dismissed Natarajan’s plea challenging the rejection of her candidature.
Earlier, Rajya Sabha Returning Officer Arvind Sharma had cancelled Natarajan’s candidature to the Rajya Sabha polls claiming incomplete affidavit since it omitted the concerned complaint in her Form 26.