Tej Bahadur Yadav Neither An Elector Nor A Candidate In Varanasi; No Locus To Challenge PM's Election: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed the petition filed by Ex- BSF Jawan, Tej Bahadur Yadav, challenging the election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi from Varanasi constituency in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The judgement was rendered in a Special Leave Petition challenging the Allahabad High Court's dismissal of Bahadur's election petition in December 2019 on the ground of lack of locus standi. The issue arose with Bahadur seeking for the declaration of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's election as void on the ground that his own nomination had been improperly rejected and that the PM's nomination was wrongly accepted for want of disclosure of certain facts. "NEITHER AN ELECTOR NOR A CANDIDATE" In the judgement delivered today, referring to the Explanation to Section 81 of the Representation of People Act, 1951, which states that anmeans a person who is entitled to vote at the election petition relates, the Apex Court noted that an Election Petition could only be preferred byThe Court then referred to Section 79 wherein the term candidate has been defined as aIt was observed that the first part of the definition was intended to cover a person who has been duly nominated as a candidate and the second part covers a person who considers himself entitled to have been duly nominated as a candidate.Assessing whether the Appellant can claim to have been a duly nominated candidate at the said election, the Court answered in negative.Stating that it was imperative as per the language of Section 33 for the dismissed officer's nomination to be accompanied with a certificate in order to be "deemed to be a duly nominated candidate", the Court held thatThe Court noted that it would befor any other construction of the law that would enable a person who was neither an elector nor a candidate to question the election of a returned candidate.Holding that Bahadur had no cause of action which would invest in him the right to sue, the Supreme Court reiterated the words of Justice VR Krishna Iyer inthatObserving that Section 83 of the RPA bars anyone other than an elector or a candidate to file an Election Petition, the Supreme Court upheld the Allahabad High Court's decision and stated that the instant Election Petition