BHOPAL: Just hours after the Supreme Court refused to stay the ongoing electoral process for the June 18 Rajya Sabha elections to three seats from Madhya Pradesh, all three BJP candidates were declared elected unopposed.
With none of the three BJP candidates — who were the only ones left in the poll fray after the scrutiny of nomination forms — withdrawing their nomination papers by the 3 pm deadline on Thursday, they were declared elected unopposed by the Returning Officer.
The ruling party’s elected candidates are national general secretary Tarun Chugh, state secretary Rajneesh Agrawal and former State Fisherman Welfare Board chairman Mahesh Kewat.
Earlier in the day, the Supreme Court refused to halt the ongoing electoral process for the Rajya Sabha polls from Madhya Pradesh, even as it agreed to hear on Friday a plea by Congress’s Telangana in-charge Meenakshi Natrajan challenging the rejection of her nomination papers by the Returning Officer.
A bench comprising Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and Atul S Chandurkar declined to pass any interim order to halt the declaration of the election result, observing that the law laid down by the apex court was clear that courts should ordinarily refrain from intervening once the election process has commenced.
The three unopposed winners from MP are all part of BJP’s organizational structure.
While Tarun Chugh is the party’s national general secretary, Rajneesh Agrawal is the state secretary who has long been the state party’s in-charge for polling booth level management across MP.
On the other hand Mahesh Kewat, who spent just a few weeks as the head of MP Fishermen Welfare Board, before quitting the post on June 7 in the wake of him being nominated as party’s RS candidate for the third seat, has been associated with the RSS since 1984 and subsequently held various district BJP organizational posts in home district Niwari (which was earlier part of Tikamgarh district of MP’s Bundelkhand region).
Hailing from the extreme backward caste (EBC) Kewat community family which has been associated as priest of the famous and revered Hardaul Ka Baithak palace-shrine in Orchha for generations, he and family commands high respect among the Kewat and associated riverine communities not just in MP, but also in adjoining Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh which will go to assembly polls early in 2027.
Political circles are now abuzz with possibilities of not just one, but two of the three BJP’s Rajya Sabha polls winners from MP, including Tarun Chugh and Mahesh Kewat, getting place in the future cabinet expansion/rejig at the centre.
While inclusion of Chugh in the Modi 3.0 cabinet is a strong possibility, keeping in mind his seniority and the 2027 assembly polls in his home state Punjab, there are speculations in BJP circles about a remote possibility of even Kewat being inducted in Team Modi as a minister of state with an eye on wooing the significant Kewat-Mallah-Sahni-Nishad-Bind communities in 60-plus riverine seats of Uttar Pradesh which also goes to assembly polls in early 2027.
A former Lok Sabha member from Mandsaur seat of western MP and currently the AICC in-charge for Telangana state, Meenakshi Natrajan’s nomination papers as Congress’s official candidate for the June 18 biennial RS polls for three seats in MP, were rejected by the election’s Returning Officer (RO) and principal secretary MP Vidhan Sabha Arvind Sharma on June 9 for not disclosing details of a private complaint filed against her in September 2025 in Hyderabad-ACJM Court by an a former woman corporator.
The Congress party challenged the RO’s decision before the Election Commission of India (ECI), but unable to get any order in the matter from the country’s election body, Natrajan approached the Supreme Court in the matter.
Congress’s outgoing Rajya Sabha member and former MP CM Digvijaya Singh, reacted sharply to the entire development (right from the June 9 rejection of Natrajan’s nomination papers by the RO to the unopposed election of all three BJP candidates on Thursday).
In a reaction, which triggered political controversy in BJP-ruled state, Singh while dubbing the entire matter as “theft,” alleged that the state government, central government, ECI and even the Supreme Court, all were involved in the theft.
Talking to journalists, the septuagenarian leader alleged “theft” in the RS polls in MP. “Theft has taken place and all are involved in it. Not just the state, but the central government also, as well as the ECI. I have to say that even the Honourable Supreme Court is involved. When the SC knew that our petition will become infructuous after 4 pm, then why didn't they hear it today, why was the date given for tomorrow? It’s a collusive theft.”
Singh’s controversial statement about the Supreme Court, drew strong reaction from ruling BJP leaders, including MP cabinet minister Vishwas Sarang. “The fault of not properly filling the RS nomination form has been committed by the Congress candidate and her party leaders and now Digvijaya Singh has crossed all limits while playing politics over it. They committed the error and he (Singh) is blaming the ECI and Supreme Court for the consequences. Disrespect to the apex court by Digvijaya Singh is intolerable.”