People's Democracy

DTF Wins, BJP Routed

ELECTIONS to the Executive Council (EC) and Academic Council (AC) of the University of Delhi (DU) took place on December 20, in the wake of a massive policy attack by the BJP-led central government on higher education. More than 7,500 teachers of Delhi University and its 80 colleges were to elect two members to the Executive Council and 26 members to the Academic Council through a system of preferential voting.

For the membership of the Executive Council, the Democratic Teachers’ Front (DTF) fielded Dr Vijender Sharma, who had served as the president of DUTA and as member of the AC and EC. For the Academic Council, the DTF fielded four candidates --- Dr Sundaram Shukla, Dr Sudhir Chauhan, Dr A N Roy and Dr Barkatullah Khan. While Dr Chauhan and Dr Roy had completed their one term as AC members, the other two candidates, known activists of long standing, contested for the first time for the AC.

Six candidates were in the fray for the Executive Council and 37 for the Academic Council.

All the four DTF candidates for the AC won handsomely by crossing the required quota of votes.

Below are given the votes polled by candidates for the EC in the first count:

The quota to win on the basis of first preference votes came out to be 1730. Therefore, Dr Sharma won in the first count itself with 123 surplus votes. Dr Singh later won on second preference votes from the surplus of Dr Sharma and from the other candidates. In the last elections held in 2000, while Dr Vijender Sharma had won in the first count itself with surplus votes, the BJP candidate had stood second but lost because he did not get sufficient number of second preference votes. This time the BJP has been humiliated by a big margin, with its candidate for the Executive Council coming third. The BJP has thus lost the EC polls for the third time in a row.