Winners celebrate, losers cry for democracy

Amarjot Kaur

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 6

As soon as the results of PUCSC elections were revealed, there was cheer on one side, anger and resentment on the other. The president of Youth Wing, Youth Akali Dal, Bikram Singh Majithia, was greeted by hundreds of SOI supporters at PU’s Student Centre who celebrated the success of the party’s candidate—Chetan Chaudhary. Back in Gymnasium Hall, candidates who lost the election were seen pleading for recounting the votes and calling the election process “undemocratic”.

Though the polling process for PUCSC elections lasted only for an hour and a half, it took a battery of committees deployed for receiving ballot boxes, short-listing, counting, and displaying the votes about four hours to put out the final verdict of the election.

The ballot boxes had started arriving at the Gymnasium Hall by noon and at 2pm sharp, the counting began. Sifting through a total of 9953 votes that were cast today, the winning candidates for the office-bearer posts of students’ council were announced. PUSU+ISA+Himsu+SOI’s Chetan Chaudhary is the new PUCSC president, while NSUI’s Rahul Kumar, Tegbir Singh and Manpreet Singh Mahal were chosen for the post of vice-president, secretary and joint secretary, respectively.

Majithia comes to campus

While the vote-counting committee was still left with compiling the votes of three departments, a confident Chetan Chaudhary, whose votes was way ahead of his contenders, rose up from his chair, announcing his win, talking to media and sharing his big plans for PU.

A crowd of students assembled at the roundabout near the gymnasium hall threw hundreds of green and yellow paper-slips on which NSUI and SOI were printed. The road now is carpeted with those slips. In unison, the hailed their party representatives and applauded their win.

Soon after, Chetan made his way to the Student Centre, where Majithia had arrived. With garlands in his neck, the new PUCSC president toured the Student Centre amidst a gamut of crowd that didn’t stop pouring in. “I feel this is the win of the centre; ours wasn’t the politics of left and right,” Majithia said to the crowd and rooted for Chetan, pretty much stealing his thunder.

INSO asks for recounting votes

At the Gymnasium Hall, INSO supporters were accusing the DSW (men) and returning officer Prof Emanual Nahar of “bias and undemocratic” elections, asking to recount Duhan’s votes. INSO’s Gaurav Duhan, who was in the fray for the post of general secretary, had lost to NSUI’s Tegbir Singh by 10 votes and the decision wasn’t met with peace. The party said: “Duhan got a significant lead after UILS’ ballot was opened. All the votes afterwards were counted behind the table including UIET, etc.”

They raised an objection and wanted a recount of the remaining votes in front of them (to which they have a constitutional right), which the authorities refused to consider.

SFS on outcome

The SFS stated that the party stood with Kashmiri people and placed its position on Article 370. Members said they had clinched and established debate on increasing privatisation of education and gender equality. No election has been so political in the history of Panjab University.

Other candidates speak

‘We respect the students’ mandate’

We have to accept the university’s mandate. However, in this election, the winning candidate used all money-muscle power that it takes. — Paras Rattan, ABVP presidential candidate

It’s the students’ mandate and we just have to respect it. I can’t say anything else. — Nikhil Narmeta, NSUI presidential candidate

We respect the mandate and we will keep fighting for students’ issues. We gave a tough competition and we lost the battle of ‘South Campus’. Also, we don’t have the kind of money and big political party’s backup as does the winning candidate. That’s also why we lost. — Priya, SFS presidential candidate