Delhi University Student Union (DUSU) elections are to be held on 11 September 2015. There is a practice in the DUSU elections that some contesting candidates add the alphabet “A” before their names to get their names listed on top of the ballot paper. This is mainly due to a belief that a large number of voters not committed to any particular contesting candidate but nevertheless exercising their voting right, exercise the same in favour of the candidate whose name appears first on the ballot paper without even bothering to go through all the names. This happens since the ballot paper may generally be lengthy and some voters may not have the patience to go through the full ballot papers. It is generally seen that some candidates whose names begin with A or some other alphabet which comes at the top of the alphabetic list, score more votes than others. All India Students Association (AISA) filed a petition before the Delhi High Court challenging this practice in the DUSU elections by some contesting candidates to add the alphabet “A” before their names to get their names listed on top of the ballot paper. The petition sought removal of prefixes “A”, “a”, “AA” or further before the names of candidates. This petition was filed AISA through advocate Kamlesh Kumar Mishra.
However, on 10 September 2015, Justice V.P. Vaish of the Delhi High Court dismissed this petition, saying the DUSU elections were scheduled to be held on Friday (11 September) and no relief can be granted at the last stage.
The high court also dismissed another plea filed by Rinka Aggarwal, a student of Ram Lal Anand College, against rejection of his nomination papers for contesting for the post of president of the students’ body. Aggarwal alleged that on August 28, he filed his nomination papers. However, his name was not there in the list of candidates which was published on September 2.
It is noteworthy that the Delhi University Students Union (DUSU) is the umbrella student organisation at the University of Delhi. It is the representative body of students from most Delhi University Colleges and Faculties. Each college in DU also has its own students union to which elections are held every year. Student elections are keenly contested since these are considered as stepping stones for the subsequent political career at the national or state level. Several of the past office bearers of DUSU have gone on to hold political offices at the State and Centre level in India.
The DUSU elections are held by direct voting by the students of the university and constituent colleges. The elections are usually held in August–September of each year. As mentioned above, this year, the elections are being held on 11 September 2015.
[With inputs from IANS.]
