The three departments with the highest number of voters – University Institute of Engineering and Technology (UIET), University Institute of Legal Studies (UILS) and Department of Laws – account for 34.5% of the total electorate for the Panjab University Campus Students Council (PUCSC) elections, according to the provisional voters’ list released by the dean students welfare (DSW) office on Friday.
The three departments have a combined voter count of 5,684, against a campus-wide total of 16,468. More students may be added to the list before the polling day on August 31, the DSW office said. UIET has the highest electorate with 2,670 voters, followed by UILS with 1,950 and the department of laws with 1,064. At present, 9,000 women and 7,467 men are eligible to vote, with one transgender student also on the list. Women therefore account for 54.6% of the electorate. The election will be conducted through 191 polling booths.
UIET was the largest department in terms of voters last year as well. The department, however, has no presidential candidate this time, making it a fair game for all parties. The trend over the years has been that the party that managed to consolidate UIET votes had better chances of winning. Data shows that the gender ratio in this department is heavily skewed towards males with 2,077 male voters and only 593 female voters.
A tug of war for law dept votes
{{/usCountry}}A tug of war for law dept votes
{{/usCountry}}Darshpreet Singh, the presidential candidate of the Sath, has graduated from UILS and is currently enrolled in the Punjabi department. He will be hoping for support from his old department even as Aadil Brar, the presidential candidate of
Association of Students for Alternative Politics (ASAP), the student wing of Aam Aadmi Party, is currently in the final year at UILS. Ankit Bidhan of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, is a research scholar at the Centre of Study for Social Inclusion, however, he completed his masters from the department of laws.
The two law departments could therefore see votes divided among Darshpreet, Brar and Bidhan. Gurman Singh Sidhu of the National Students Union of India (NSUI), the wing of Congress, is a student of the University Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (UIPS) and is expected to focus on support from science-related departments.
Last year’s results show the influence these three departments hold. PUCSC president for the academic year 2025-26, Gauravveer Sohal defeated his closest rival Sumit Sharma in all three. Sohal secured 446 votes against Sharma’s 338 in UIET, 449 against 195 in UILS, and 119 against 99 in the department of laws. Smaller departments, by comparison, have much smaller electorates and are unlikely to have the same influence on the final result. Campaigning is also less prominent in departments with fewer voters.
Will long weekend affect voter turnout
However, voter turnout could emerge as a key factor this year. With Rakhi falling on Friday and the weekend immediately following it, several students have gone home for the festival and may not return to campus to vote on Monday.
Turnout stood at 58.6% last year, when heavy rains affected the campus during polling. It was 66.6% in 2024 and 65.8% in 2023. The university is also unlikely to declare a holiday following the elections, as Vice-President of India and PU Chancellor CP Radhakrishnan is scheduled to visit the university on September 4. During his visit, Radhakrishnan will inaugurate upgraded advanced instrumentation facilities at the Sophisticated Analytical Instrumentation Facility/Central Instrumentation Laboratory (SAIF/CIL) and the PU Technology Innovation Forum (PU TIF), formerly BioNEST. He will also address students, faculty and staff at the university auditorium on the Sector-14 campus.