Sacked BSF jawan moves SC against his candidature cancellation

New Delhi, May 6: Sacked Border Security Force (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 (SP) 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 on 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 BSF.

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.

PTI