Varsity elections return to Maharashtra after 26 years

Shiv Kumar
Tribune News Service
Mumbai, July 29

Elections will be held in universities across Maharashtra after a gap of 26 years. According to Education Minister Vinod Tawde all the universities in the state will conduct elections by September 30.

"We have already amended the Universities Act to hold elections for various posts. Every university will hold polls for students to elect college

representatives, student council president, secretary, women's representative and backward class representative before this date," Tawde said.

The minister added that the elected representatives will in turn elect office-bearers for the entire university.

Voting will be held using ballot papers. While the first round of voting will be completed in August, the second would be over by September 30.

The Devendra Fadnavis government has decided that the elections will be held on a non-party basis. 

"Any student found to be a member of a political party would stand disqualified from contesting elections," a spokesman for Mumbai University said. 

Candidates are barred from using symbols of political parties and the formation of different panels of contestants is also disallowed, according to the official.

Despite the ban on the entry of political parties in the university elections, student wings of all the major parties are gearing up for the polls.

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the students' wing of the Sangh Parivar and the National Students Union of India (NSUI) affiliated to the Congress party, has already begun enrolling members from different colleges.

The Shiv Sena is slow to get off the ground with the party leaders still appointing office bearers of the Yuva Sena, according to sources. The Sena has, however, objected to the ABVP and the NSUI enrolling members in colleges ahead of the elections.

The Maharashtra government had ordered elections in college across the state to be scrapped in 1993 following the murder of a law student and NSUI leader Owen D'Souza in broad daylight. A police investigation had revealed that the murder was a result of rivalry between NSUI and ABVP.

Since then, college managements appointed top academic performers to students' councils.