On September 21, Randhawa had addressed a joint press conference with Bhupinder Beniwal, HSU president, at university's student centre to declare their alliance and field Praneet Garewal for the post of secretary as an HSU candidate. However, Beniwal who had been evading arrest, was arrested by the city police from the press conference on charges of being allegedly involved in the kidnapping of a PUSU activist. Interestingly, immediately after the arrest, Randhawa had declared: "I didn't know that Beniwal was evading arrest; we have not signed any agreement with HSU to date; the SOPU-ABVP alliance stands as such".

On Praneet's candidature, Randhawa had denied that Parneet was associated with HSU and had claimed that he was a SOPU activist fielded by the SOPU-ABVP alliance on his personal merits. Parneet had also affirmed: "I am a SOPU activist and have nothing to do with HSU."

Randhawa had also claimed that he had never before seen the just-released "SOPU-ABVP-HSU manifesto". He had owed it to the someone's mischief. Later in a press release, Randhawa had stated: "SOPU-ABVP alliance has nothing to do with HSU. No such alliance exists between SOPU-ABVP and HSU."

On September 22, the SOPU-ABVP alliance had faxed their agreement of alliance with HSU to all the newspaper houses, which also bore the signatures of Praneet Garewal. On the morning of September 23, all the office-bearers of SOPU-ABVP had denied having faxed any such statement and had called it "a prank".

However, today Praneet said: "I am an HSU worker and I represent HSU in the SOPU-ABVP-HSU alliance."