The Delhi High Court on Friday dismissed the criminal appeal filed by Congress MLA Rajendra Bharti challenging his conviction in a decades-old cooperative bank fraud case, with Justice Manoj Jain refusing to interfere with the trial court’s verdict.

Rajendra Bharti, the sitting MLA from Datia in Madhya Pradesh, had been convicted by the Rouse Avenue Court in April 2026 and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment in a case relating to financial irregularities in the functioning of a cooperative agricultural development bank. Following the conviction, he stood disqualified from the Madhya Pradesh Legislative Assembly under the provisions of the Representation of the People Act, 1951.

The High Court’s dismissal of the appeal comes in the backdrop of the Election Commission notifying the by-election for the Datia Assembly constituency, which fell vacant after Bharti’s disqualification. Rajendra Bharti had won the Datia seat in the 2023 Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections, defeating senior BJP leader and former State Home Minister Narottam Mishra by a margin of 7,742 votes, ending Narottam Mishra’s long hold over the constituency.