Varanasi: Dismissed BSF jawan Tej Bahadur Yadav on Monday filed a petition in the Supreme Court (SC) challenging rejection of his nomination as Samajwadi Party candidate from Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency. Well-known SC advocate Prashant Bhushan is appearing for Yadav.
Tej Bahadur Yadav’s nomination was rejected on Wednesday over “discrepancies” in the two nominations filed by him. Yadav had claimed that his nomination papers were cancelled at the behest of the BJP-led government at the Centre, adding that he had replied to the Election Commission’s giving a thorough explanation over the difference in reasons.
“My nomination has been rejected wrongly. I was asked to produce the evidence at 6.15 pm on Tuesday. We produced the evidence, still my nomination was rejected. We will go to the Supreme Court. We have been told that we did not produce the evidence that was asked from us before 11 am. Whereas, we had produced the evidence,” he had said.
On Tuesday, the EC had issued a notice to Yadav because he had given different reasons for leaving his job in the two sets of nomination papers filed — one as an independent and the second as SP candidate.
“We had submitted the evidence that was asked from us. Still, the nomination was declared invalid. We will go to the Supreme Court,” Yadav’s lawyer Rajesh Gupta had said.
It is to be noted that Yadav SP-BSP-RLD had named Yadav as the alliance’s candidate for the Varanasi Lok Sabha seat against PM Modi.
In 2014, Modi had won from Varanasi after defeating Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal by 3.71 lakh votes. Modi had bagged 5,81,022 votes, while Kejriwal got 2,09,238 votes. Congress’ Ajai Rai had garnered just 75,614 votes.
This year, Congress had once again fielded Rai amid speculation that the grand old party may field Priyanka Vadra Gandhi from Varanasi parliamentary constituency.
SP chief Akhilesh Yadav had lashed out at the BJP after the cancellation of Yadav’s nomination and had said that the SP would support Yadav’s decision to approach the apex court to appeal against his rejected nomination.
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