New India: Sacked BSF jawan Tej Bahadur Yadav on Monday moved the Supreme Court challenging the Election Commission’s decision to cancel his candidature from the Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency from where Prime Minister Narendra Modi is contesting.
Yadav, who was dismissed in 2017 after he posted a video online complaining about the food served to the troops, was fielded by the Samajwadi Party as its candidate from the Varanasi seat.
Yadav, in his plea, termed the decision of the poll panel discriminatory and unreasonable and said it should be set aside.
The SP had initially fielded Shalini Yadav as its candidate to contest against Modi and later nominated the sacked BSF jawan.
The poll panel had dismissed Yadav’s nomination Wednesday.
He was served notices by the Varanasi returning officer over discrepancies in the two sets of nomination papers submitted by him.
In the first set of papers on April 24, he had mentioned that he was dismissed from the Border Security Force.
On April 29 he submitted a second set of papers as the SP nominee, but did not give out this information.
He was also required to submit a no-objection certificate from the BSF, giving reasons for his dismissal.
Yadav had accused the BJP of resorting to “dictatorial steps” to stop him from fighting elections.
“My nomination was rejected today even though I had furnished the NOC from BSF that was required by the RO, he had claimed.
I am a farmer’s son and I was here to raise the voices of farmers and jawans,” he had told reporters.
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The Govt made the EC to reject the nomination of Tej Bahadur Yadav and the subservient EC obliged. This shows how BJP is scared about truth. Hope SC would set right the failure of EC.
It is becoming difficult to accept decisions of the ECI blindly. Take the refusal to bring on record the dissent of one of the honorable Commissioners to majority decisions pertaining to violation of the MCC. This is not chit chat over chai and Marie biscuits in Nirvachan Sadan. This is valuable jurisprudence on the conduct of elections in India. It pertains to both letter and spirit of the law. Whether the composite order, including the note of dissent, ought to have been displayed on the ECI’s website – my view – or it suffices to preserve it in official records is a matter of debate. However, it is unheard of that while discharging its statutory, sacred duties, the ECI will be deciding issues of such import orally. 2. Too late now, perhaps, to obtain substantive relief but the rejection of Shri Tej Bahadur’s candidature was bad in law.