The Election Commission (EC) has reportedly cancelled the nomination of Samajwadi Party (SP) candidate Tej Bahadur Yadav, a former Border Security Force (BSF) jawan, from Varanasi due to discrepancies in the nomination papers filed by him.

According to the reports, EC had issued a notice to Yadav regarding discrepancies in his nomination papers. He had reportedly submitted the response to the notice but the EC was reportedly not satisfied with it and cancelled his nomination. However, there is no official confirmation from EC regarding the cancellation of Tej Bahadur’s nomination.

Tej Bahadur had earlier filed nomination as an independent candidate from the Varanasi seat. However, the Samajwadi Party (SP) on Monday (29 April) in a surprise move replaced its Varanasi candidate Shalini Yadav with Tej Bahadur.

The former BSF trooper was sacked from service after complaining about the quality of food served to the soldiers.

According to an India Today report, EC officials said that Tej Bahadur presented differing accounts over why he was sacked from the BSF.

During his nomination as an independent candidate on 24 April, Tej Bahadur, in his nomination papers, had claimed that he was fired from the BSF over charges of corruption. However, in the nomination papers filed by him as the SP-BSP coalition candidate, he did not mention about the charges.

Writing a letter to Tej Bahadur Yadav, EC said any government employee who has been dismissed for "corruption or disloyalty to the state" should be disqualified from campaigning for a period of five years, as reported by India Today.

The EC issued him a notice asking why he was dismissed from the office and asked him to file a reply by 1 May.