Election Commission rejects Samajwadi Party’s Tej Bahadur Yadav’s nomination from Varanasi 

Tej Bahadur Yadav. 

New Delhi: The Election Commission, on Wednesday, cancelled the nomination of former Border Security Force jawan and Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party alliance candidate Tej Bahadur Yadav from the Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency. Following this, Yadav said he will approach the Supreme Court seeking revocation of the EC order.

Initially, Yadav had filed his nomination as an independent candidate. However, the Samajwadi Party extended its support and gave him the party ticket to contest the election on. Even the Bhim Army extended its support to Yadav.

Talking to media, Yadav said, “My nomination has been rejected wrongly. I was asked to produce the evidence at 6.15pm yesterday, we produced the evidence, and still my nomination was rejected. We will go to the Supreme Court.”

The development comes after the returning officer in Varanasi sought an explanation over alleged discrepancies in the two sets of nomination papers Yadav filed for the Varanasi seat.

He was also required to submit a no-objection certificate from the BSF, giving reasons for his dismissal in the second set of papers on which he missed out.

Earlier on Wednesday, Yadav alleged the Bharatiya Janata Party was creating “roadblocks” in his nomination process to “prevent” him from contesting elections against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and said, “I am being stopped from fighting elections as the ‘nakli chowkidar (fake watchman)’ of the country is afraid of the ‘asli (real) chowkidar’.”

On the other hand, while targeting Modi, Aam Aadmi Party chief and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal also alleged that the prime minister got the former BSF jawan’s nomination “cancelled” as he was “afraid” to contest against him from the Varanasi Lok Sabha seat.

Kejriwal, in a tweet, said, “There will be fewer occasions in history when the jawans of a country are compelled to challenge their PM, but this is the first time in history that a PM has been so afraid of a jawan that instead of competing with him, he got his nomination cancelled on technical grounds. Modi ji, you are very weak and the country’s jawan won.”

इतिहास में ऐसे कम मौक़े होंगे जब उस देश का जवान अपने PM को चुनौती देने को मजबूर हो

पर इतिहास में ये पहला मौक़ा है कि एक PM एक जवान से इस क़द्र डर जाए कि उसका मुक़ाबला करने की बजाए तकनीकी ग़लतियाँ निकाल कर नामांकन रद्द करा दे

मोदी जी, आप तो बहुत कमज़ोर निकले। देश का जवान जीत गया https://t.co/Bwb9qJEmyf

— Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) May 1, 2019

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