Students' Union Elections

The elections for the Students' Union for the academic year 2008-09 of HCU proved to be a great leap for SFI on the campus.SFI was launched in the campus in November 2006 and in the two years the growth of the organization was tremendous.SFI contested in five out of the six posts.The post of Cultural Secretary was won by the SFI candidate (Sneha Bang) and the post of Sports Secretary was won by North-East Association candidate who was supported by SFI. SFI doubled its vote share compared to last year and SFI candidate for Cultural Secretary won with the highest margin. SFI candidates lost the post of President for 29 votes and the post of General Secretary for 34 votes. Of the 25 School Councilors, SFI won 17.

The election process was marred with different controversies. The first notification was put up on 20 October,2008 and the elections were scheduled to be conducted on 30 October,2008. SFI had the best panel of candidates and three Dalits were in the panel. SFI had clear winning chances, but it was when ABVP and NSUI started demanding for the implementation of the Lyngdoh committee recommendations, a issue which was settled long before the elections. The VC acted swiftly to stop the election process and a re notification was made. Two of the Dalit candidates of the SFI panel was disqualified-one exceeded the age limit by 5 days and the other had a backlog. The students of deprived communities are given age relaxations and other exemptions in educational institutions. Why was it not implemented in the case of elections too? Some other organizations which was against implementation of the recommendations,jumped sides at the last moment.

The campus witnessed the dirty politics of NSUI and ABVP. The President of the organization bribed the voters by supplying diaries and shoes, which was then seized by the Election Commission. ABVP's President had to apologize to the student community for the disruption ABVP created during the Open-dais session.

SFI, which went to the elections without any alliances like last year doubled the vote share. When the average vote polled for SFI candidates were 350 last year it had become 750 this year.