Supreme Court dismisses Tej Bahadur Yadav's plea challenging rejection of his nomination from Varanasi

Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed a petition filed by sacked Border Security Force constable Tej Bahadur Yadav challenging the rejection of his nomination from Varanasi Lok Sabha seat earlier.

A Bench headed by Chief Justice of India, Ranjan Gogoi dismissing the plea said, "We don’t find any merit to entertain this petition."

Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for Yadav, said, as per the earlier verdict of the apex court, the election petition can be filed during enforcement of the Model Code of Conduct.

Senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, appearing for the Election Commission, also referred to various apex court judgments and said election petitions can only be filed after polls are over as it would vitiate the electoral process.

At the fag end of the hearing, Bhushan sought liberty from the court to file an election petition after polling is over.

Yadav, who was dismissed from the BSF in 2017 after complaining about the poor quality of food served to the soldiers in a video, which went viral, had filed nomination papers against Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency. His nominationgot rejected after he failed to submit a certificate asking for clarification on the reason behind his termination.

According to a report, he was asked to submit a certificate clarifying whether his services were terminated due to corruption or disloyalty to the government.

Meanwhile, Yadav has alleged that he was given a very short period to submit the certificate and his nomination was rejected wrongfully.

In 2017, Yadav had posted four videos on social media which showed him complaining about unpalatable food at his camp along Indo-Pakistan border in Jammu and Kashmir.

He was named as the Samajwadi Party candidate from Varanasi parliamentary constituency to take on Prime Minister Modi on Monday. Earlier, he was in the fray as an independent candidate.

Varanasi seat was won by Prime Minister Modi in the last Lok Sabha elections. He had defeated AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal with a massive margin of 3.37 lakh votes.

The election in Varanasi is slated to take place in the last phase of seven-phased Lok Sabha elections on May 19. The counting of votes will begin on May 23.

(With inputs from news agencies)