By Jaideep Sarin, IANS
Chandigarh : Student leaders – projected politicians of the future – are finding it hard to accept new guidelines on students’ council polls in the Panjab University (PU) that seek to ensure that aspiring leaders will be busy attending classes.
Top student leaders of the Panjab University and its affiliated colleges were rendered “ineligible” for the Nov 5 poll by the new rules, because they have not attended at least 75 percent of their classes, as they were supposed to.
Posts of even the president of college students’ council have gone abegging this year as all nominations were rejected for non-compliance of the guidelines.
Former chief election commissioner J.M. Lyngdoh drew up the new guidelines for student elections. The implementation of the guidelines this year by the Panjab University for its campus polls in affiliated colleges located in Chandigarh saw all top leaders from various student groups being ruled out even before the first vote has been polled.
The main reason is that most student leaders fail to fulfil the requirement of 75 percent attendance. Though there are other strict guidelines like name of the contestant not being involved in any police case or conviction, contestant not having any academic arrears and no re-election for a post contested earlier, it is the attendance criterion that has taken the maximum toll.
“It is a major concern for student leaders. Most of our leaders have been dropped because of the stiff condition of attendance. We had to file more than three nominations for each seat,” student leader Harpreet Singh Multani of the Students Organization of Panjab University (SOPU) said.
Multani, who was being projected as SOPU’s presidential candidate for the students’ council, was forced to get out of the fray due to the police case condition.
In the S.D. College here, the authorities rejected nominations of all presidential seat contestants after they failed to meet the attendance criterion. In other colleges, the situation was no different with either no one or just one person contesting for some of the posts.
Teachers and authorities are quite happy that from now on student leaders will be seen in classes more often.
“The attendance requirement is for every student. It cannot be exempted for leaders,” said Sanjiv Tiwari, the university’s public relations director.
“Student leaders have the habit of not attending classes themselves and even come with recommendations for getting attendance for others. This will stop now,” a science professor in D.A.V. College said.
The nomination of Deepak Hooda for the post of campus general secretary from the Panjab University Students Union (PUSU) and the Indian National Students Organization (INSO) alliance was rejected for not meeting the attendance criterion. His rival, Ankit Malik of SOPU, also bowed out of the race for the same reason.
“The condition on attendance is harsh and impractical. If student leaders attend classes when will they work for the students? This is as good as saying that a minister should attend office 75 percent of the days instead of visiting the state and his own constituency,” a former PU students’ council president told IANS on condition of anonymity.
He added that in the future, student organizations would have to take into account students’ attendance instead of their leadership qualities to make them leaders.
Student leaders claim that the 75 percent attendance requirement, which is also mandatory under the University Grants Commission’s (UGC’s) academic requirement, is usually met only on paper.
“The Lyngdoh committee’s recommendations are harsh. They have created a problem in selecting candidates. Till the last minute we did not know who would be contesting. This is not good,” National Students Union of India (NSUI) president Nitin Goyal pointed out.
The attendance of the student leaders till Oct 31 was made the criterion for their eligibility under the Lyngdoh committee recommendations. The academic session in PU starts early July. The students’ elections this time, which should have been held in August, have been delayed because of a court case.