Former student leaders back direct polls in Haryana varsities, colleges

ROHTAK: Several former student leaders from Haryana have backed protests by student parties over the BJP-ruled state government’s decision to hold indirect student elections in universities and colleges of Haryana.

Condemning police action on students who were protesting in Rohtak and Kurukshetra on Friday, former student council presidents of various universities — Inderjit Singh (Chaudhary Charan Singh Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar), Shamsher Malik (Maharishi Dayanand University, Rohtak), Virendra Singh (HAU), Phool Singh Sheokand (HAU), Balwan Singh Suhag (MDU), Paramjit Singh (MDU) and Kulbir Singh Dhaliwal (Kurukshetra University) — dubbed the lathi-charge as “unconstitutional”.

Except for BJP’s student wing ABVP, all student parties in the state have protested against the move.

They said the action had exposed the conduct of the BJP government and revealed erosion of autonomy in higher education institutions of Haryana. They said vice-chancellors (VCs) had been reduced to ordinary government functionaries and most of the appointees were incompetent ‘yesmen’ of political bosses.

Inderjit said he had led a hard struggle during his student days and achieved the right to have directly polls to elected campus student bodies as a legitimate right for democratic participation in all affairs. “The abandoning of unions for decades together was a setback and a denial of the democratic right. What is now being introduced is not the restoration of directly-elected students bodies as promised by the BJP before the last assembly elections,” he said.

Shamsher said, “We reject the draconian conditions imposed for contesting student bodies’ elections and the undemocratic provisions for nominations, which make the whole exercise a total farce.”

Supporting the demands of the student community, the former youth leaders have urged the Haryana government to hold direct elections in the interest of improving the academic atmosphere and saving the institutions of higher education from being destroyed.