Left Unity takes early lead in JNUSU polls

The Left Unity was leading on all the major seats of the JNU student union polls as per initial trends.

After the counting of 550 ballots out of 1841, Aishe Gosh from Left Unity was leading for the post of President with 266 votes, much ahead of Jitendra Suna of Birsa Ambedkar Phule Students' Association (BAPSA) Fraternity.

Saket Moon from Left unity was leading for the post of Vice President with 360 votes, Satish Chandra Yadav for the post of General Secretary with 261 votes and Mohammad Danish for the post of Joint Secretary with 353 votes.

The Left parties including All India Students' Association (AISA), Students' Federation of India (SFI), Democratic Students' Federation (DSF) and All India Students' Federation (AISF) are contesting the polls together.

The counting of votes for JNU polls began after an 11-hour delay due to the stalemate between the students and the administration.

The counting process which had begun at 11.55 pm on Friday had to be put on hold due to the deadlock between the students and the university's Grievance Redressal Cell (GRC). The students demanded a written undertaking from the polling agents that the results would not be disclosed before September 17. It was then decided that apart from the initial trends, the final results will be declared later by the university.

The Delhi High Court on Friday restrained the JNU from notifying the election results till September 17.

The university's EC chairman Shashank Patel said that the counting process began at 11.55 pm Friday. He said the process had to be put on hold due to a deadlock between the student community and the JNU's Grievance Redressal Cell (GRC) over the latter's demand that the counting agents give a written undertaking stating they would not disclose the results, he said.

"The EC tried its best to convince the GRC to change its stand based on the demands of the student community," Patel said, adding that the deadlock led to an 11-hour delay in the counting process.

After the consensus wasn't reached even after the passage of several hours, the EC decided to resume the counting of votes anyway with declaration of trends, the EC chairman said. The result, however, will be put on hold, he added.

The university saw a turnout of 67.9 per cent voters on Friday. This is believed to be the highest the university has ever seen in seven years.

Earlier, the results were supposed to be declared on Sunday. But the High Court ordered the results be put off till September 17 on the pleas by two students alleging that their nominations for election of councillor in the JNUSU were illegally rejected.

( With inputs from IANS )