PU polls: NSUI grows from 2 to 3

The Students Organisation of India, Indian National Students Organisation, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and Students Federation of India, which are student wings of the Shiromani Akali Dal, Indian National Lok Dal, BJP and the CPM respectively, drew a blank.

NSUI had an alliance with Himachal Students Union and National Students Organisation, neither of which is affiliated with a political party.

SOI had an alliance with INSO and three other organisations while PUSU had an alliance with SFI and three other organisations. ABVP contested on its own.

Divyanshu Budhiraja, a student of the University Institute of Engineering and Technology, is the new students’ council president; he defeated Ruchit Duggal of SOI by 58 votes.

Snigdha Bawa was elected vice-president, defeating Raman Kaur Sivi of SOI by 288 votes while Ankur Sehrawat was elected secretary, defeating Neeraj Kharab of PUSU by 1,081 votes.

Abhishek Thapar of PUSU was the only non-NSUI winner; he was elected joint secretary by defeating NSUI’s Sachin Kanwar by 76 votes.
Fifty departmental representatives were also elected, but their party affiliations were not immediately known.

In the outgoing students’ council, the president and the joint secretary were from the NSUI, the vice-president was from ABVP and the secretary from INSO. Obviously, the ABVP and INSO have lost ground.

Dean of Students Welfare Navdeep Goyal said this was the first time in the university’s history that an organisation had won three of the four top positions in the students’ council.

Goyal said since the victory margin for the posts of president and  joint secretary was less than 100, he ordered a recount but the overall result remained the same.

Perhaps due to the rain all day, the polling was 59 per cent as against 68 per cent last year. Only 8,452 of the 14,323 students cast their vote. Another reason for the low polling was that the election was held on Friday and many hostellers had left for their home in order to add an extra day to the weekend. Last year, the election was held on a Wednesday.

Vice-Chancellor Arun Kumar Grover said, “The polling percentage has gone down but we are glad that the elections were peaceful and no untoward incident was reported.”

PU Chief Security Officer Jatinder Grover said, “The extra vigil over the last few days and particularly on the polling day, and co-operation from the police, helped us in preventing unlawful activities. We did not get a single complaint from any organisation.’’