New DELHI – Tej Bahadur Yadav, an ex-soldier of the Indian army, who was dismissed by the Border Security Force (BSF) for making a video complaining about poor quality of food, has approached the Punjab and Haryana High Court against his dismissal from the service.
Yadav, who was deployed with the force’s 29th battalion, had levelled allegations that troops were served bad quality food and even had to sleep “on an empty stomach” at times, leading to initiation of an inquiry against him.
After the ex-soldier filed a plea with the court, the single bench of Justice P B Bajanthri served notice to the centre, Director General of the BSF and others.
NDTV quoted Yadav as “Since no improvement took place in food quality and quantity the petitioner and his BSF colleagues decided to make a video proof of such poor quality and quantity of food for showing it to their senior officers”.
His counsel said that Yadav did not know when his colleagues posted the video on his Facebook account which went viral in no time.
The former soldier in his petition stated that the department submitted two charg-sheets against him in February 2017, adding that he was sacked by the Summary Security Force Court (SSFC) in April last year.
He added that an appeal was also filed against the SSFC order but the Director General of the BSF turned it down in November 2017, the counsel said.
“We just raised a point that petitioner was just demanding food in sufficient quantity. But he was dismissed from service,” Yadav said.
The court will take up the case on May 28, 2018.
‘We only get a ‘paratha’ (wheat bread) and tea as breakfast and that too without any pickle or vegetables. We slog for 11 hours and at times we have to stand throughout the duty hours. For lunch, we get ‘dal’ (pulses) with only ‘haldi’ (turmeric) and salt with roti. This is the quality of the food we get. How can a jawan do his duty?’ asked Yadav in the video.