By IANS,
Chandigarh : The Students Organization of Panjab University (SOPU), an independent group, and its allies Friday swept the Panjab University Central Students Council (PUCSC) poll, winning all four posts of office bearers.
Results of the high-tension poll were announced Friday afternoon. The SOPU alliance -with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s youth wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), and Haryana Students Association (HSA) – won the election.
The other group, led by Panjab University Students Union (PUSU) was defeated in the election.
The alliance secured the top four posts of president, vice-president, general secretary and joint secretary polling for which was held earlier Friday.
Sahil Nanda of the University Institute of Engineering and Technology (UIET) department won the president’s post bagging 2,718 votes.
Parul Chaudhary won the vice-president’s post with 2,569 votes. She is a student of the political science department, PU.
Prashant Sharma from the law department, PU, won the general secretary post’s with 2,351 votes. The post of joint secretary went to Deepak Thakur, from the department of University Institute of Legal Studies (UILS). He secured 3,090 votes.
Major groups contesting the PUCSC elections were PUSU, SOPU, ABVP, HSA, Indian National Student Organisation (INSO), Student organization of India (SOI) and National Student Union of India (NSUI).
This year no students’ organization was contesting the elections all by itself and all parties had formed alliances.
The major alliances are of SOPU-ABVP-HSA, INSO-SOI and PUSU-NSUI.
Around 9,000 students study at the PU campus, spread over 550 acres in Sector 14 and Sector 25 in Chandigarh. The university has around 60 teaching and research departments and over 170 colleges are affiliated to it.
Panjab University is one of the oldest universities in India, being established in 1882 at Lahore. In 1956, PU was relocated at Chandigarh.