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Tej Bahadur v. Shri Narendra Modi

Civil Appeal · 2020 INSC 655Decided 24 Nov 2020
Civil Appeal No. 2100 of 2020
Chief Justice S.A. Bobde · Justice A.S. Bopanna · Justice V. Ramasubramanian

Background

Tej Bahadur, a former BSF employee dismissed from service in 2017, tried to contest the 2019 Lok Sabha election from Varanasi against Shri Narendra Modi but gave contradictory answers in his two nomination forms about whether he had been dismissed, and never submitted the mandatory Election Commission certificate confirming his dismissal was not for corruption or disloyalty. His nomination was rejected by the Returning Officer for lacking this certificate, and he later filed an election petition challenging Modi's election, which the Allahabad High Court threw out for lack of standing since he was neither a voter in that constituency nor validly a candidate.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that under Section 33(3) of the Representation of the People Act, a dismissed government employee's nomination is legally deemed invalid unless accompanied by the Election Commission certificate, and since the appellant never obtained or submitted that certificate, despite being given a chance to cure the defect, he could not claim to have been "duly nominated" as a candidate. Since only an elector of the relevant constituency or a duly nominated candidate can file an election petition under Sections 79, 81 and 83 of the Act, and the appellant was neither, his petition disclosed no valid cause of action and was rightly dismissed at the threshold. The Court emphasized that a petition this clearly without merit should be "nipped in the bud" rather than allowed to proceed, and dismissed the appeal.

Lesson Learnt

A person who fails to meet a mandatory legal requirement for a valid election nomination, such as producing a required certificate, cannot later claim the legal status of a "candidate" in order to challenge someone else's election; procedural prerequisites for standing in election disputes are strictly enforced.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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