The Allahabad High Court on Friday issued a notice to Prime Minister Narendra Modi while hearing a petition challenging his election victory from the Varanasi parliamentary constituency. The petition challenging Modi’s election was filed by ex-BSF jawan Tej Bahadur Yadav.
Yadav was declared the joint candidate of the grand alliance comprising Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and the Rashtriya Lok Dal. But soon after the Samajwadi Party declared Yadav its official candidate, the district election official had disqualified the former paramilitary soldier’s candidature by rejecting his nomination papers.
The reason cited by the returning officer was that Yadav had failed to submit a certificate confirming that he was not sacked from the BSF for either corruption or disloyalty. The returning officer had given just one day for Yadav to furnish these documents.
Returning Officer Surendra Singh had said that anyone dismissed from service in the last five years was required to produce a certificate to show that he did not lose his job due to corruption or disloyalty to the country. He said that Yadav could not produce the certificate in time as he was asked to submit the document by 11 am on Wednesday.
The sacked BSF jawan, who lost his job after raising the issue of poor quality of food being served to paramilitary forces, said that he was given an incredibly short notice but he was still able to submit the document to the Returning Officer.
The court, according to news agency PTI, heard Yadav’s case and decided to send a notice to Modi. Yadav’s lawyer had argued that the former BSF soldier was not given an opportunity of being heard before the rejection of his nomination papers.
Justice M K Gupta fixed August 21 for hearing of the case.