BSF Rejects Voluntary Retirement Of Tej Bahadur Yadav Who Had Posted Video On Facebook

The Border Security Force (BSF) has rejected the application of voluntary retirement of constable Tej Bahadur Yadav three weeks after the Jawan had posted a video on Facebook. The video had created sensation across the social media in which Singh described the deplorable state of our soldiers and the terrible food quality they are served.

After rejecting Yadav’s plea of Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS), the BSF said that it has “cancelled pending the Court of Inquiry (CoI) and finalisation of its recommendations”.

The BSF’s move has left Yadav’s family in utter disappointment as his wife alleged that her husband was being “threatened and tortured mentally and kept under arrest”. She told ANI that her husband said all this to her in a telephonic conversation on Thursday.

However, the BSF has claimed that the cancellation of the VRS was communicated to Yadav on the evening of 30 January and they have not kept him under arrest as alleged by his wife.

Mr Yadav had applied for voluntary retirement which was accepted last year. But after he posted the video in January that went viral, the BSF and the Home Ministry ordered a probe into the allegations. Although he was supposed to retire on 31 January, considering the enquiry pending against him, his voluntary retirement had been cancelled.

According to the laid down procedure under CoI, all the witnesses in a case are probed by the team till the investigation concludes, and since the Jawan is facing charges of indiscipline on various counts, the privilege of getting a VRS for him has been disallowed.

The video that brought Yadav’s ordeal

Tej Bahadur Yadav, deployed along the Indo-Pak border in Jammu and Kashmir region had uploaded a video on 8 January where he alleged that the Jawans were facing oppression as they were served poor quality of food and sometimes had to sleep on an empty stomach.

In the video, the trooper also claimed that his seniors were selling Government essentials meant for them in the market to make a profit.

Following the video, Home Minister Rajnath Singh took to social media and sought a report and asked to take appropriate action.

The video that created ripples across Facebook and Twitter had put the BSF on the back foot. They later defended themselves claiming that Yadav was a habitual offender, an alcoholic who needed regular counselling.

An investigation report from the BSF was published by the Home Ministry which stated that there was no substance in the complaint of the soldier that poor quality ration was given. The matter has been probed into, and nothing substantial has come out of the charges levelled by Yadav.

Following Yadav’s video, BSF directed its special teams to check on the morale of the jawans and the force and said that instances of complaints being voiced via the social media were being dealt with “strictly”.

The Army Chief Gen. Bipin Rawat urged the jawans to use the system to air their grievances for redressal, not the social media.

The Logical Indian urges the government and army to allow the VRS of Tej Bahadur Yadav. As this instance was a first-of-its-kind, the matter should have been handled with sensitivity.