Panjab University gives in, says secretary post vote recount on Tuesday

CHANDIGARH: Three-day-long protest by the Indian National Students Organisation (INSO) alleging discrepancies in counting of votes for the secretary’s post in the PU Campus Students’ Council (PUCSC) elections has led Panjab University (PU) to announce that the recount would take place at the gymnasium hall from 2 pm on Tuesday.
It will be the first of its kind exercise on the campus — votes have been recounted several times before the announcement of results earlier.

A grievance redressal committee took the decision after holding a meeting with INSO representatives on Monday morning.
INSO candidate Gaurav Duhan, who was leading by a large margin for a long time, had lost out in the last round of counting by 10 votes. NSUI candidate Tegbir Singh had won the post. The INSO has alleged votes of the last few rounds were counted at a mysterious location and only the results were brought to them.
“While the authorities began counting votes in front of us, they disappeared with the ballot boxes in the last few rounds and returned with the figures, telling our candidate has lost by 10 votes. We noticed that five NOTA votes were added to NSUI candidate and demanded a recounting. However, they only counted one department’s votes again to fool us,” alleged Rajat Nain, the chairman of INSO. He said they filed objection against the results, but it was ignored and dean student welfare Emanual Nahar left the venue and switched off his phone. Since then, INSO has been sitting on protest demanding recounting of votes.
The party members on Monday demanded for a serialwise counting of all the votes polled by students to ensure transparency. Nahar said only secretary’s votes will be counted as termed appropriate by the grievance committee.
Student Organisation of India (SOI) candidate Chetan Chaudhary had won the president’s post of the PUCSC while the posts of vice-president, secretary and joint-secretary were won by NSUI candidates.