Calcutta University’s Law College campus on Hazra Road was in disarray on Monday after activists owing allegiance to the Students’ Federation of India (SFI), the CPM students’ wing, held demonstrations, gheraoed the head of the department and ransacked his office.

Their demand — that the authorities allow the SFI candidates, who had not received the official nod, to withdraw the nominations they had filed last week to contest Tuesday’s students’ union elections.

Head of department N.K. Chakraborty refused. No candidate would be allowed to withdraw nominations barely 24 hours before the elections, he said. This irked the students.

At 10 am, the authorities put up a notice saying that the applications submitted by SFI candidates on Friday to withdraw nominations stood rejected, and that all 152 candidates who had filed nominations to contest the 50 seats would have to remain in the fray.

Officials said candidates’ pleas for withdrawing their nominations were rejected because of technical errors detected in their applications.

University sources said SFI candidates have won Calcutta University’s student union elections uncontested over the past few years. This year, too, 152 candidates, all of them SFI, had filed nominations for 50 seats.

“We allow an excess number of candidates to file nominations. We prepare the final list of candidates after discussions with our state-level body and then, the extra candidates are asked to withdraw their nominations,” said Gauranga Dandpath, who looks after the Hazra Law College SFI unit.

This year, too, the excess candidates were asked to withdraw their nominations by the organisation’s senior leaders. They did so on Friday.