By IANS,
New Delhi : Seeing a second election in the year, students in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) voted Friday for 30 candidates in the fray for the posts of president, vice-president, general secretary and joint secretary of the JNU students union.
The university, which saw its first election after four years in March this year, once again went to polls as per recommendations of the Lyngdoh Commission on university elections.
Creative posters of different parties dotted the campus along with posters put up by an anti-Lyngdoh recommendation group, Students For Resistance (SFR), to boycott the elections.
The Lyngdoh Committee was set up in 2006 to lay down guidelines for university elections.
Among its various recommendations, the committee puts a Rs.5,000 cap on election expenses per candidate. Printed posters, pamphlets or any other printed material is allowed for canvassing. Elections are to be held yearly between six and eight weeks from the date of commencement of the academic session.
In a campus dominated by leftist student parties, visibly marking their presence were the Congress’ student’s wing, National Students Union of India (NSUI), and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-backed Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP).
“There is a difference in these elections from the ones held earlier. But of course, there has been a gap,” said Rajesh, a student of the School of Development Studies in JNU.
Abhishek Yadav, who was elected the vice-president in the last election held in March, said: “Due to the gap of four years, there has been a depoliticisation. We are trying to revive the old spirit of debate and sensitisation on various issues.”
“In JNU, elections are never only on issues of the campus. National, as well as international issues figure up,” Yadav, a member of All India Student’s Association (AISA), told IANS.
AISA had swept the last polls, winning all four posts.
Results for the polls will be declared Saturday.