The increasing buzz on students body elections came down several decibels in the Jawaharlal Nehru University on Tuesday when a resolution asking for immediate elections was defeated by 83 votes. The Students Federation of India,leading all other political organisations except the All India Students Association (AISA),put to vote on Tuesday its demand for elections to the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU). It had proposed that the JNUSU defy the 2008 ban on elections imposed by the Supreme Court,and hold elections within three weeks. The Supreme Court on October 25,2008 had put a stop to elections in the university after JNUSU refused to adopt the election guidelines formulated by the Lyngdoh Committee and chose to follow the existing code. The union did not agree with Lyngdohs rules that contestants could not be more than 25 years of age,and that a candidate could not contest more than once. If the SFIs resolution had not been defeated at the universitys general body meeting (UGBM) on Tuesday,the JNUSU could have been held in contempt of court. The AISA,which leads the JNUSU,garnered 749 votes in support of its stand that the students body will now file a writ petition before the Supreme Court seeking to remove the ban. In its three-paragraph resolution passed on Tuesday,the AISA also chalked out a tentative plan for the election process. The resolution began: This UGBM gives JNUSU the mandate to complete the necessary task of holding school GBMs within two weeks for the formation of the JNU Election Committee,to which JNUSU will hand over charge. This means JNUSU will cease to exist after two weeks. But the resolution is silent on the actual conduct of elections,though its own guidelines that it supported two years ago over Lyngdohs say that elections must be held within four weeks after the election committee is formed. SFI vice-president Roshan Kishore said: This is the problem with this resolution. The elections now depend on the outcome of the writ petition demanding the ban be lifted. In the second paragraph,the resolution empowers the Joint Struggle Committee fighting to get the ban lifted to file the writ petition. JNUSU counsellor Meera Vishwanathan said: The Joint Struggle Committee will explore all legal and political options to defend the JNUSU constitution. Decisions on filing the writ petition and other actions will be taken in the coming weeks in consultation with the student community and our lawyer. The hope about elections was rekindled on November 11,2009,when the Supreme Court while hearing the Joint Struggle Committees petition against the ban had referred the matter to a five-member Constitution bench. Justices Markandey Katju and A K Ganguly felt that the implementation of the Lyngdoh Committee guidelines amounted to judicial legislation. The apex court has not yet initiated the process of forming the Constitution bench.
