Supreme Court ends Tej Bahadur Yadav's election dream

The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to give dismissed BSF jawan Tej Bahadur Yadav a chance to compete with Prime Minister Narendra Modi from the Varanasi Lok Sabha seat as it found no ground to set aside the decision of the Election Commission (EC) rejecting his nomination form on May 1.

On a technical ground, Tej Bahadur Yadav lost out on the opportunity to contest elections with support from Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party. His dismissal from the Border Security Force (BSF) in April 2017 also disqualified him from contesting elections for five years.

However, if a certificate from EC were to verify that the dismissal was not on grounds of corruption or disloyalty, Yadav could have contested the polls.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan, who appeared for Yadav, argued that the dismissal order clearly stated that it was on ground of indiscipline and hence no certificate from the EC under Section 9 and 33(3) of the Representation of Peoples Act was required. He further stated that his prayer is not to delay the election but to participate in it as the ground to reject his nomination was improper.

The EC, which was asked by the Court to examine Yadav's grievance on Wednesday, argued that the candidates cannot delay the election process but should wait for it to get over.

Bhushan said that the election is to take place on May 19 and nothing is barring the Court from allowing a candidate to contest polls.

The bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, Justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna decided to go with the EC's stand and dismissed the petition. As a parting shot, Bhushan submitted that by this order, Yadav had a chance to demand a re-poll by filing an election petition against the winning candidate claiming that the rejection of his candidature by the EC was improper.

Yadav in his petition had said, "It seems the decision (to disqualify him) has been taken keeping in mind the sensitivity of the contest and to give walkover to the candidate of the ruling party (PM Modi) by disqualifying the petitioner whose candidature was gaining momentum and was therefore also supported by the main Opposition alliance of two major political parties in the state (BSP and SP)."