]The Election Commission has announced the schedule for the Datia Assembly by-election on Thursday. As per the declaration, polling will take place on July 30, and votes will be counted on August 3. The seat had fallen vacant after Congress MLA Rajendra Bharti’s membership was terminated. Candidates can file their nominations until July 13, while scrutiny of nomination papers will take place on July 14. The last date for withdrawal of nominations is July 16. The entire election process will be completed by August 4. As per the official notification of the Election Commission of India (ECI), the Model Code of Conduct has been implemented with immediate effect in the Datia Assembly constituency. Voting will be conducted at all centres through EVMs and VVPATs. By-elections are being held on the Datia Assembly seat because after Congress MLA Rajendra Bharti received a sentence of more than two years, his Assembly membership automatically ceased. Following this, the Madhya Pradesh Assembly Secretariat declared the seat vacant.

 

In 1998, an alleged fraud involving a Fixed Deposit (FD) at the Datia Co-operative Rural Development Bank was surfaced. At the time, Rajendra Bharti was the bank’s chairman and also a trustee of the concerned institution. The case was later investigated, and a charge sheet was filed. Subsequently, April 1, 2026, a special MP-MLA court convicted Rajendra Bharti in the 28-year-old bank fraud and forgery case and sent him to judicial custody. The following day, April 2, the court sentenced him to three years’ imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs one lakh. While the court stayed the execution of the sentence for 60 days to allow him to appeal before the High Court, the conviction itself remained in force. The same day, the Madhya Pradesh Legislative Assembly Secretariat issued a notification terminating Bharti’s membership with effect from April 2. That had led the Datia Assembly seat vacant. Notably, it was ordered under Section 8(3) of the Representation of the People’s Act, 1951, any MLA convicted and sentenced to two years or more is disqualified. In 2023, the then, Madhya Pradesh Home Minister Narottam Mishra lost his Datia seat to Congress candidate Rajendra Bharti. Rajendra won by a margin of 7,742 votes.