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Bhubaneswar: The Students’ Union election will be held in Odisha next year, informed State Law Minister Prithiviraj Harichandan on Monday.
“Elections are typically conducted in the first week of September. However, due to the new government assuming office in June, there was insufficient time to undertake the necessary preparations. This year, colleges will ready themselves, and elections will commence from the next year. We are nearly resolved on this matter,” he reported to the press.
Since 2018, campus elections have not been conducted in the state. Even before that, college elections were sporadically halted. Despite the absence of elected student councils over the past six years under the guise of preserving campus tranquillity, higher education institutions have continued to appoint student representatives to necessary bodies.
In September 2023, noticeable unrest was observed on campuses as the student union elections were not scheduled in the common academic calendar for the 2023-24 academic year by the Higher Education Department. The elections are customarily held before the Durga Puja break (September-October).
Protests erupted at Utkal University, and the Akhil Bharatiya Bidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the BJP’s student wing, petitioned for the Orissa High Court to intervene.
The 2018 college elections were called off due to Cyclone Titli. In 2017, the last year when elections took place, five universities, including Utkal and Ravenshaw, along with eight colleges, abstained from voting due to student unrest. In 2019, election proceedings were suspended on account of campus violence, and Saswat Mishra, the then principal secretary of Higher Education, ordered the discontinuation of such elections until further notice, advocating instead for the appointment of student representatives to higher education institution bodies.
The students’ union elections were not conducted in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The directive from 2019 remained uncancelled and unmodified over the next two years.
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