On June 9, Meenakshi Natarajan’s nomination as one of three candidates in Madhya Pradesh’s Rajya Sabha Elections was rejected by the returning officer. The decision was taken on grounds of concealing information about a legal case in her affidavit.
Congress leaders cried foul, as Natarajan herself named this ‘seat chori’, while the BJP rejoiced. The ruling party otherwise did not have the numbers to win the final seat up for grabs in the elections, now they are set to clean sweep the state.
Natarajan, who belongs to a Tamil family, was born in Nagda village in Madhya Pradesh’s Ratlam district and has been associated with the Congress in the state for a long time.
There were three seats vacated from Madhya Pradesh in the Rajya Sabha after the retirements of George Kurian and Sumer Singh Solanki of the BJP and Digvijay Singh from the Congress. According to the arithmetic in the state legislative assembly the status quo was to be maintained, BJP winning two seats and the Congress winning one.
Despite knowing that they had the numbers to win only two seats the BJP announced candidates for all three. This raised suspicion in the Congress camp who feared cross voting from its MLA’s. To counter this they decided to move all their legislators to a resort in Karnataka.
But the ruling party struck where the Congress did not expect, BJP candidate Mahesh Kewat had complained against Natrajan’s candidature and got a decision in his favor after which her nomination was cancelled.
Youth Leader to Gandhi Aide
Her political career came to the fore after she served as the president of the National Students Union of India (NSUI), the Congress’ student body, from 1999 to 2002.
After this, she was made the President of the Madhya Pradesh Youth Congress in the state from 2002 to 2005 reflecting her growing role in the state’s politics.
In 2008, when Rahul Gandhi was making his foray into politics, he needed a team a coterie of young leaders whom he could trust and seek counsel from. This was in tradition with previous leaders of the Nehru-Gandhi family. His father Rajiv Gandhi knitted together a similar team, which included Arun Nehru, Manishankar Aiyar and Sam Pitroda, after his entry into politics.
Natarajan was brought into Rahul’s core team of young leaders along with others like Krishna Allavaru, Sachin Rao and Praveen Chakravarty, and was made an All India Congress Committee (AICC) secretary in 2008. All of them hold high offices in the Congress at the moment with Chakravarty slated to start his term as Rajya Sabha MP from Tamil Nadu after being elected unopposed.
Foray Into Electoral Politics
In the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, Natarajan was chosen by Gandhi to contest the elections from Mandsaur. The seat was held by BJP heavyweight and six-time MP Laxminarayan Pandey.
But, the young Congress leader proved her mettle and defeated the BJP veteran by a margin of around 30,000 votes and became a first-time MP. Her time in the Lok Sabha was on the whole largely unremarkable asking a total of 135 questions in her tenure, less than half of the national average. She also participated in 16 debates in Parliament, again way lower than the national average at the time.
In the 2014 elections, she was one of the many opposition politicians who was swept away by the Modi wave and was defeated in Mandsaur by Sudhir Gupta. The 2019 elections brought no changes for Natarajan as she once again lost the seat to Gupta. In 2024, she wasn’t given a ticket to contest from the seat.
After her stint in electoral politics, the Congress leader was brought back into the organizational fold and was appointed the AICC’s Telangana in-charge in 2025.
Polarising Leader
During her time in Telangana she wasn’t well-liked by the senior leadership in the state. Her list of detractors included Chief Minister Revanth Reddy, according to the Indian Express. He is said to have remarked that her brand of “simplistic” politics might work in north India but would hurt the party’s image in the state.
Natarajan also drew flak from many leaders in the state for supporting protests against the Reddy government over a proposal to clear 400 acres of land allotted to the University of Hyderabad.
Though she has often been praised by party leaders and supporters for her loyalty to the party and Gandhi having stayed with them in their lowest moments.
