Delhi HC demands clean campus before DUSU election result, raises corruption concerns

The Delhi High Court on Oct 9 ordered the Delhi University Students Union (DUSU) election candidates to remove any graffiti from the campus. The court said that if the public property is restored, the court will allow the vote to be counted the next day.

A court presided over by Chief Justice Manmohan and Tushar Rao Gedela addressed the lawyers for the two candidates who had challenged the polling and said, "Why don’t you clean up the place? If you clean, we’ll allow (counting of votes). So much dirt.”

“Please ensure that people clean up the places. Get all the posters and the stickers removed. We’ll allow the counting to take up the next day. We don’t want the voting to be withheld,” the court said.

The bench also raised concerns about the large amount of money pumped by candidates during the votes, emphasizing that it "involved money laundering and corruption by students" and was "worse than general elections."

“How much money have you pumped up in the election? Free food is being distributed. What are you people doing? What are you becoming?

The university today is not taking the leadership. The problem today is that there is a lack of leadership,” the court said.

“A large number of candidates are from the law faculty. Students must have an attachment to the college. It’s a festival of democracy; it’s not a festival of money laundering. At times, society loses connection with reality. It’s wrong,” the court added.

In response to two candidates who had challenged the polls, the court was considering their request to be included as a party in the plea demanding action against the potential candidates who had engaged in defacement.

Candidates for vice president of Campus Law Center-2 and secretary of Ramjas College claimed in their applications that they would get the walls repainted and remove any vandalism on the property in cooperation with the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and the University of Delhi.

The polls were held on Sep 27, but the court ordered DU to postpone counting the votes until it was satisfied that the vandalism had been removed and the public property had been restored.

Although the bench granted the university's motion to proceed with the polls, it requested that the university covers the costs paid by the civic agency, such as the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC), to clean the vandalized properties and then retrieve the money from the candidates.

The court held that the university was to blame for the chaos and for "vitiating the elections," defacing the property and causing the candidates to spend crores of money. It claimed that this was because the university lacked authority, will, courage, and oversight.

The university was also criticized by the court for just acting in opposition to the candidates and complying with its orders, saying that by doing so, it was "merrily going around without taking a stand" and permitting its standards to decline.

According to the office of the chief election officer, DUSU, a total of 1,45,893 students from 52 colleges had cast their votes in the election.