BENGALURU: Amidst the debate among academicians and students about whether student elections should be held in universities or colleges, the Karnataka Government on March 6 announced conducting student elections from the next academic year in universities and colleges.
While some academicians have come in support of elections, others fear that it will bring back rowdy culture and caste politics into campuses. Therefore, they suggest there must be a systematic strategy to implement student elections, and political parties must not only remain off campuses but also stay away from imposing their ideas on students.
The last student elections in state universities happened in 1989, after which they were stalled due to a few violent incidents.
Muralidhar BL, professor of the Computer Science department from Bangalore University, Jnanabharti Campus, explained, “Student elections must happen because elected student representatives can explain the problems to the administration.
These days, the vice chancellors select a student representative on their own who is likely to favour all the decisions by the administration. There will always be fights among student groups with or without elections on the campuses. In fact, the administration must come out with a clear road map to prevent these fights from happening.”
He added, “Caste system or politics will continue to exist even in the student elections. It cannot disappear when the universities have segregated even the hostels based on the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (SC/ST). If they are to blame the elections for the same, then they must get rid of caste-based hostels in the first place.”
Meanwhile, prof Basavaraj Donur from Central University of Karnataka in Kalaburagi, said, “Although there is a provision in the University Grants Commission (UGC) to conduct student elections, it should not happen because it will only destroy the academic atmosphere of the campuses. Many students are coming from across the globe to study in Karnataka. If elections happen, then it will give rise to fights and controversies on the campus.”
On the other hand, student organisations want the elections to happen; however, it should not be just to create cadres for national political parties like Congress and BJP, but to address student issues.
Apurva CM, state vice president, All India Democratic Students Organisation (AIDSO), said, “Congress is keen on implementing student elections to get new cadres for NSUI and future leaders. This should become clearly a democratic body to discuss issues related to education policies and rectifying flaws, ragging, issues related to their respective universities related to infrastructure and professors recruitment, allocation of guides for PhD scholars and more.”