Supreme Court Dismisses Plea Against PM Modi’s Election

The Supreme Court Tuesday dismissed sacked BSF jawan Tej Bahadur's plea against the rejection of his nomination papers to contest the 2019 Lok Sabha polls against Prime Minister Narendra Modi from the Varanasi constituency.

A bench comprising Chief Justice S A Bobde and justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian, that had reserved its verdict in the case on November 18, upheld the Allahabad High Court judgment dismissing Bahadur's election petition against the poll panel's decision to reject his nomination papers.

On May 1 last year, the Returning Officer had rejected the nomination papers of Tej Bahadur, a Samajwadi Party (SP) candidate, who was dismissed from the Border Security Force (BSF) in 2017 after he posted a video online complaining about the quality of food served to the troops.

The High Court had upheld the returning officer's decision to reject his nomination.
Bahadur's lawyer had argued before the top court that the petitioner had earlier filed his nomination as an independent candidate and later as SP candidate.
Referring to the high court's verdict, the lawyer had claimed that Bahadur's nomination was rejected for extraneous reasons.

While rejecting the nomination papers of Bahadur, the Returning Officer had observed that "the nomination paper is not accompanied by a certificate issued in the prescribed manner by the Election Commission to the effect that he has not been dismissed for corruption or disloyalty to the state".

In a nut-shell the factual matrix of the case is that on the directions of the Returning Officer, the nomination of the appellant to the elections was wrongly rejected for not being presented in a prescribed manner and rejected the nomination/candidature of the Appellant for the Election of the 17th Lok Sabha from 77th Parliamentary Constituency (Varanasi), UP to be held in April-May 2019, Bahadur has said in his plea.

Bahadur said he sought a declaration that the election of the respondent (Narendra Modi) be declared as void and the order passed by the returning officer dated May 1, 2019, rejecting his nomination be set aside.

He has claimed that high court had failed to appreciate that nomination letter of the appellant has been rejected by the District Election Officer by going against the intention of the legal provisions and by misusing the provisions mentioned in the sections 9 and 33(3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951.

On May 9, last year, the top court had rejected his plea challenging the EC decision saying it did not find any grounds to entertain the plea.