JNU students union seeks more liberal poll norms

NEW DELHI - The Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) Monday rejected in Supreme Court a suggestion by amicus curiae Gopal Subramaniam to increase the age limit for contesting its election from the existing 28 to 30.

The union also rejected a suggestion to permit a candidate in the election to contest three times for different offices.

The JNUSU’s refusal to accept the amicus curiae’s suggestions means that the court’s stay in 2008 on holding election to the students’ union remains in force.

When the matter came up before the apex court bench of Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan, Justice Deepak Verma and Justice B.S. Chauhan, Subramaniam asked the students union to consider his suggestions for relaxing the election rules.

He said his suggestion on the relaxation of age limit for contestants and permitting a candidate to contest three times for different offices were subject to the application of other recommendations of the J.M. Lyngdoh Committee which framed guidelines for students’ union elections in colleges and universities.

JNUSU counsel Sanjay Parikh told the court the union may agree to relaxation in the age limit and increasing the number of times a student could contest in elections for different posts but will not accept the other conditions imposed by the Lyngdoh Committee.

Parikh raised these objections only after the court started recording in its order the two modifications suggested by the amicus curiae.

The court had even said that the proposed modifications were only for the JNUSU and could not be treated as a precedent for other universities.

But in view of the Parikh’s objections, Chief Justice Balakrishnan said that the court will hear the entire matter and decide the issue on merit. The next hearing of the case was fixed for the second week of July.

The last election to the JNUSU took place in 2007. Besides a host of other objections, the union is opposing the committee’s recommendation on a ceiling imposed on candidates age and the restrictions on the number of times a candidate could contest election to the student body.

At the start of the hearing the amicus curiae told the court that by the time a student does his MPhil or PhD, he reaches the age of 30 years and there was a case for increasing the age ceiling from 28 years to 30 years for JNUSU elections.

He told the court that it has been agreed that a student could contest three elections for different positions.

The matter reached the court on the JNUSU’s plea opposing the recommendations of the Lyngdoh Committee which filed its report in 2006.