Fix damage if you want DUSU poll results, HC tells candidates

Delhi High Court allows DUSU vote counting after candidates clean public defacement, criticizing election spending and corruption in university politics.

The Delhi high court on Wednesday asked candidates who had contested the Delhi University Students Union (DUSU) elections to clean all defacement incurred on public property, stressing that the court would permit counting of votes as soon as damage to property is restored.

Election pamphlets cover the premises in North Campus on September 25. (Vipin Kumar/HT Photo)

“Why don’t you clean up the place? If you clean, we’ll allow [the counting of elections] … Please ensure that people clean up the place. Get all the posters and stickers removed. We’ll allow the counting to take up the next day. We don’t want the voting to be withheld,” a bench led by chief justice Manmohan said to the counsels representing two candidates who had contested the polls.

The bench, also comprising justice Tushar Rao Gedela, expressed displeasure at the amount of money pumped into the elections by the candidates, underlining that it “involved laundering of money and corruption by the students” and that the situation was “worse than general elections”.

“How much money have you pumped in the election? Free food is being distributed. What are you people doing? What are you becoming? Today, the university is not taking the lead. The problem today is that there is a lack of leadership. Large number of candidates are from law faculty. Students must have an attachment with the college who are studying. It’s a festival of democracy, it’s not a festival of money laundering… It’s wrong,” the court said.

The court was responding to an application filed by two candidates who had contested the polls, and to be impleaded as a party in the plea seeking action against the prospective candidates who were involved in defacement. In their application, the candidates, who had contested for the post of vice president in Campus Law Centre-2 and secretary in Ramjas College, asserted that they would clean the defacement in the premises in coordination with the DU and Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and get the walls repainted.

On September 26, the Delhi high court allowed DU to proceed with the elections on September 27 but halted counting the votes till the court was satisfied about the removal of defacement and restoration of public property. Though the bench acceded to the varsity’s request of going ahead with the polls, it asked DU to pay for the expenses incurred by the civic agencies to clean the defaced properties and later recover it from the candidates.

Blaming the varsity for the mess and “vitiating the elections”, defacement and incurring of expenditure in crores of rupees by the candidates, the court said the varsity created the conditions due to its lack of supervision, monitoring, will, courage and authority. The court also criticised DU for only acting against the candidates after the court’s directions, saying that the varsity was “merrily going around without taking a stand” and was allowing its standards to fall.

The high court’s reprimand comes in the light of dozens of reports of violations of the university’s code of conduct in the run-up to the DUSU elections this year, where widespread defacement of public property was reported. University elections code of conduct, as based on the Lyngdoh committee guidelines set up by the Supreme Court in 2005, states that candidates are not permitted to make use of any printed posters or pamphlets during campaigning, they are prohibited from defacing any property and must curtail their poll expenses to below ₹5,000, among others.