A challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s election as MP last year from the Varanasi constituency in Uttar Pradesh was rejected by the Supreme Court today.
A sacked Border Security Force (BSF) jawan Tej Bahadur Yadav, who wanted to contest against PM Modi but failed to after his documents were rejected by the Election Commission, had petitioned the court.
A three-judge bench of Chief Justice SA Bobde, Justice AS Bopanna and Justice V Ramasubramanian dismissed his plea, backing the Allahabad High Court’s decision to do so.
The Allahabad High Court had earlier dismissed the dismissed BSF jawan’s petition against his nomination papers being rejected by the Election Commission on May 1 last year, ahead of the national election.
Tej Bahadur had argued in the Supreme Court that he had filed his nomination as an independent candidate and later as a candidate of Samajwadi Party from Varanasi. The election body rejected his nomination for “extraneous reasons”, he alleged.
Tej Bahadur was dismissed from the BSF in 2017 after he posted a video online complaining about the quality of food served to frontline troops posted in Jammu and Kashmir.
