The counting for Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) polls has begun on Friday. Around 40 per cent of the 1.3 lakh eligible students voted in the DUSU elections on Thursday.
With four women, sixteen candidates were in the fray for the four DUSU posts.
In morning colleges polling began from 9.30 am and ended at 1 pm, while in evening colleges it started at 3 pm and was concluded at 7.30 pm.
The results are expected to come by the afternoon. Counting is taking place at the Community Hall of the Police Lines in northwest Delhi’s Kingsway Camp, DU Chief Election Officer Ashok Prasad said.
Both the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and the National Students Union of India (NSUI) claim to have drawn votes for their candidates. The left-supported AISA is also hoping to win at least one DUSU post.
Last year, the ABVP had won three posts while the NSUI won one post which had recorded 44.46 per cent voter turnout. Polling was conducted for four positions, that of president, vice-president, secretary and joint secretary.
EVMs were delivered to the polling centres on Wednesday with strict security arrangements in place. As many as 52 centres were set up across the university for polling.
The RSS-affiliated ABVP had fielded Akshit Dahiya for the post of DUSU president, Pradeep Tanwar for vice-president, Yogit Rathee for general secretary and Shivangi Kherwal for joint secretary.
The NSUI pitted Chetna Tyagi for the post of president, Ankit Bharti for vice-president, Ashish Lamba for secretary and Abhishek Chaprana for joint secretary.
However, in the college students unions, both the ABVP and the NSUI claimed to have won the majority. Where ABVP claimed to have won over 48 seats in 51 colleges, with their 17 panels wining the elections.
Siddharth Yadav, state ABVP secretary said, “We have won majority of seats in colleges’ students’ union. The NSUI has been spreading lies that they have won more seats. They have even projected our winning candidates as their’s.”
The NSUI too alleged that the ABVP has been spreading lies and dared it to prove their claims.
NSUI state president Akshay Lakra said, “I challenge them to prove any name in our list that belonged to their student wing.”
NSUI claims to lead students’ union of 22 colleges.
The low voter turnout, could be attributed to holiday for students across the university as it was polling day, so many students didn’t turn up to cast their votes.
There were some allegations of Electronic Voting Machine ( EVM ) malfunctioning as well.