The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed a petition by sacked BSF jawan and Samajwadi Party candidate Tej Bahadur Yadav challenging the rejection of his nomination from Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency. Dismissing the plea, CJI Ranjan Gogoi said: “We dismiss the petition. We don’t find any merit to entertain this petition.” The SP candidate’s nomination was rejected over discrepancies in the two sets of nomination papers submitted by him.
Tej Bahadur had earlier submitted his nomination as an independent candidate. However, later the Samajwadi Party dropped its candidate and picked the former BSF jawan to take on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Tej Bahadur again filed another set of nomination papers which the returning officer rejected citing discrepancies.
In the first set of papers, Yadav had mentioned that he was dismissed from the BSF. But he did not mention this information in his second set of papers submitted as SP nominee. According to rules, Yadav was also required to submit a no-objection certificate (NOC) from the BSF detailing reasons for his dismissal.
The BSF jawan had blamed the BJP for his nomination rejection and said that the ruling party was resorting to ‘dictatorial steps’ to stop him from contesting against Prime Minister Modi. He also claimed that his nomination was rejected even though he had furnished the NOC from BSF that was required by the returning officer.
Tej Bahadur Yadav was dismissed two years ago after he posted a video online complaining about the food served to troops. He called the decision of the commission discriminatory and unreasonable.
Varanasi will go to polls in the seventh and last phase on May 19. The Congress has fielded Ajay Rai to challenge PM Modi in Varanasi. In 2014, Modi had defeated Arvind Kejriwal by over 3.7 lakh votes.