E-Paper
Panjab University senate polls postponed: Syndicate bypassed, allege members
On August 15, PU announced that the senate elections had been deferred for two months.
The members of the Panjab University syndicate on Tuesday alleged that the executive body of the varsity had been misled and bypassed before deciding to defer the senate polls.
The members of the syndicate—including Ashok Goyal, Navdeep Goyal, Rabindra Nath Sharma, Jarnail Singh and HS Dua—who had staged a dharna at the varsity late Monday evening held a press conference here on Tuesday.
They alleged that the decision was taken behind their backs and the executive body was not taken into confidence by vice-chancellor (V-C) Raj Kumar before making the postponement order public.
On August 15, PU announced that the senate elections had been deferred for two months. The members of the syndicate had then demanded that the documents based on which the decision had been made, which were given to them on Tuesday after a night-long dharna.
Syndicate member Ashok Goyal said, “The regulation under which the polls were postponed states that the V-C can defer the elections at any stage in case of emergency, but the matter shall be reported to the syndicate.”
“The V-C has no business to make [the decision] public without taking the matter to the syndicate first. The decisions are being taken somewhere else,” he said.
Syndic Navdeep Goyal said, “The UT administration and their legal experts were consulted even though PU has its own legal panel. If there was a need to postpone the senate elections, they should have held a syndicate meeting to discuss it.”
Now, members are demanding that a special syndicate meeting should be held in this regard. However, PU registrar Karamjeet Singh said, “The decision has been taken as per the advice of the UT administration and within the framework of rules and regulations, keeping in view the pandemic.”
Meanwhile, 21 senators including Subhash Sharma, Sanjay Tandon and Gurdip Sharma on Tuesday wrote to the V-C to take action against those syndicate members who had staged the dharna at the registrar’s office the whole night.
