The election recorded 91.5 per cent polling as compared to 91.6 per cent last year. (Representational Image)
Existing time Deepak Kaushik was once again elected as the president of the Panjab University (Non-Teaching) Staff Association (PUSA) for the sixth time after the results of the election held on May 15 were declared on Thursday. Kaushik, who also represents the PUSA in the Senate, was the president from 2012-2016. In 2016-17, Ravinder Mohan Trikkha became the president, but the post was reclaimed by Kaushik in 2017.
On Tuesday, 950 votes were polled out of a total of 1,037 votes. Of these, nine were declared invalid. Two groups, led by Kaushik and Sarwan Singh Mann, fought the election. Kaushik got 596 votes against 345 votes for Mann and won the election by 251 votes.
The election recorded 91.5 per cent polling as compared to 91.6 per cent last year. The committee is formed of 21 members, of which seven are office-bearers such as president, senior vice-president, vice-president, general secretary, secretary, publicity secretary and finance secretary. Kaushik, Inder Mohan, Honey Thakur, Baljinder Singh, Manjeet Singh, Raj Kumar (Raju) and Deepak Sharma have been elected to these posts, respectively.
The remaining are executive members, including one from the officer constituency, two from the superintendent constituency, seven from the assistant constituency and four from the clerk constituency. According to information, only one executive member has been elected in the superintendent constituency from the group led by Mann.
The new committee will hold its first meeting on Monday to discuss their plans for the year. Newly elected president Deepak Kaushik said, “We have modified the childcare leave plan of Punjab government to suit the needs of the employees of the university and will be meeting on Monday to frame a proposal. This will be submitted to the Syndicate and if approved, it will go to the Senate.”
He added that the new committee will also look into the regularisation of contract employees who have worked for over 15 to 20 years at the university. “Their payscale is similar to regular employees, but they don’t get some benefits such as house rent allowance. We want them to become regular as they’ve dedicated a major part of their service to the university,” Kaushik said.
He added that the contract employees who have worked for seven years in a row till June 17 will also be covered under their proposal. If they completed 10 years of uninterrupted service, they will demand their regularisation.