E-Paper
PU senate polls: Clean sweep for Goyal group in faculties constituency
Of the 12 candidates in fray, six from Goyal group were declared elected after the counting of votes; the remaining candidates were aligned with the BJP group
The Navdeep Goyal and Ashok Goyal alliance on Wednesday won all six seats in the constituency of faculties of Panjab University (PU) senate.
Both Navdeep and Ashok were also contesting from the constituency. Of the 12 candidates in fray, six from the Goyal group were declared elected after the counting of votes. The remaining candidates were aligned with the BJP group. This was considered a key contest on the PU campus.
In the arts faculty, Ronki Ram was declared elected after securing 53 votes. Ram was in a close contest with Anju Suri, who managed to bag 47 votes.
Ashok Goyal, a powerful candidate from the Goyal group, was declared elected in the medical science faculty with 47 votes. He was contesting against Dr Sarvdeep Singh Dhatt. “We have proved what we said. It is not only the victory of democracy but defeat of those who tried to stall the process,” he said.
From the languages faculty, former PUTA president Rajesh Gill won after bagging 48 votes against Gurpal Singh, who got 35 votes.
Keshav Malhotra of the Goyal group secured 141 votes and was declared elected from the combined faculty. He was contesting against Naval Kishore.
From the science faculty, Navdeep Goyal won with 90 votes. Navdeep was contesting against former PUTA president Promila Pathak, who secured 38 votes. “The margin with which we have won the election shows that democracy can never be defeated,” Navdeep said.
With 37 votes, Anu Chatrath was elected from the law faculty. She was contesting against Jagjot Singh Lalli, who got only 10 votes.
The alliance between Navdeep and Ashok was forged during the syndicate election in 2018 and the group had last year decided to continue to fight senate polls together. They were both in the opposite camps during the previous senate polls of PU.
So far, the election has been conducted for seven constituencies of the PU senate. The varsity has yet to announce the date of polling for the registered graduate constituency.
