NSUI activists demonstrate with files containing Senate nomination papers. Picture by Prashant Mitra

Ranchi, Sept. 29: Ranchi University today agreed to hold the students? union election before the Puja vacation, but not before a section of the students ransacked the vice-chancellor?s office, disrupted the ongoing electoral process for the Senate and escaped with official registers.

Polling to elect teachers? representatives to the Senate is scheduled for October 10.

RU officials chose to negotiate with the students and invited them to a meeting at 7 pm when they agreed to call a meeting of all students? unions on Sunday, October 3, to finalise plans to hold the election. If necessary, said Ajit Sahay, the coordinator of college development council, the vacation could be extended.

Although the University Act specifies that Senate meetings will be valid only if elected representatives of students attend them, RU has been reluctant to conduct the students? union poll. The general perception that Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) is on a weak wicket, it is believed, was behind the RU?s reluctance. The VC, it is said, did not want to embarrass the BJP-led government in the state.

Earlier in the day, National Students? Union of India (NSUI) supporters went on the rampage at the university office. NSUI leader Alok Dubey blamed the vice-chancellor for sparking off violence. The VC, he claimed, was both hostile and rude and refused to even listen to them. Indeed he even stormed out of his chamber in a huff, Dubey added.

This upset the students, who turned furniture upside down, broke the crockery and finally rushed out with the ?nomination register? of teachers that was lying there.

Dubey told reporters that the demand to hold students? union poll was pending for over a decade. RU officials are surely not illiterate, he asked aloud, and unable to read or follow the provisions in the law.

A NSUI delegation, he pointed out, had called on the chancellor, Ved Marwah, recently. The chancellor, he claimed, had declared that the vice-chancellor had the authority to conduct the poll and he did not require any sanction from the state government. In sharp contrast, the vice-chancellor has been telling them that he could not go against the wishes of the state government, claimed Dubey. ?This VC has mortgaged the autonomy of the university,? he said.

Kushwaha was not available for comment.

The capitulation by RU officials raises several pertinent points. Till yesterday, the officials have been busy claiming that the students? union election could not be held in so short a time. Today they were busy assuring students that the election would be held before October 13, when the Puja vacation is scheduled to begin. Did they come up with the promise only to retrieve the register taken away by the students?