39.90 pc voter turnout in DUSU polls

The voter turnout in Delhi University Students' Union polls on Thursday was recorded at 39.90 per cent, over four notches down from the last year.

The results will be declared on Friday. Last year, the election saw a 44.46 per cent voter turnout.

The polling for four positions of (DUSU) ended amid allegations of EVM malfunctioning. Sixteen candidates, including 4 women, were in the fray and 52 polling centres were set up.

Over 1.3 lakh students were eligible to cast their vote. As many as 144 EVMs were used for students' union polls and 137 were used for college union polls.

Polling began in morning colleges at 9.30 am and ended at 1 pm, while in evening colleges it commenced at 3 pm and ended at 7.30 pm.

The voter turnout recorded across 43 morning colleges was 39.69 per cent, almost four notches down from last year's figure of 43.8 per cent.

In 2017, the overall voting percentage was 42.5 per cent while it was 36.9 per cent in 2016.

Last year, the ABVP had won three posts while the NSUI won one post.

Hot and humid weather, holidays in colleges and disenchantment of students with the politics were cited as reasons for the lower turnout.

Thursday was a declared holiday for students on account of it being election day, so students did not turn up to cast their votes, said some student leaders.

There were long queues to cast votes as Law Faculty, Miranda House and Ramjas College.

In the North Campus, almost 400 police personnel were deployed to prevent any untoward incident, police said.

TheRSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) said its members won the college union polls in 35 colleges and the Congress-affiliated National Students' Union of India (NSUI) said it won in 22 colleges.

Sidharth Yadav, State Secretary, ABVP, Delhi, said, "ABVP has won by a landslide in many college internal elections. These are very encouraging signs as far as the impending outcome of the DUSU poll is concerned."
Ruchi Gupta, NSUI national in-charge tweeted, "Again, in Aryabhatt college, EVM is malfunctioning as usual AGAINST NSUI. When ballot is pressed for NSUI candidate, EVM does not light up to indicate registration of vote. Our rep is getting more details. "