The university campus on the day of the elections. Picture by UB Photos

Oct. 25: Third semester student mass communication department, Dipjyoti Deka, was elected general secretary of the Post Graduate Stu-dents Union of Gauhati University.

The results of the election were declared today.

Dipjyoti, an National Students Union of India candidate, defeated his only rival, Debashish Sarma, an AASU candidate, by 207 votes.

While Dipjyoti got 1,017 votes, Debashish received 810 votes.

The daylong election was held from 9am to 4pm yesterday.

Of 3,146 students, 1,857 cast their votes (59.02 per cent) to elect their representatives.

All throughout the day, the candidate and their supporters waited with bated breath, as the counting commenced in the presence of teachers and student representatives.

The election and counting passed off peacefully.

State NSUI president Partho Pratim Bora said they had succeeded in winning nine posts of the 15 in the students’ union, including the general secretary’s post.

He said with the result, NSUI has established its hold on Dibrugarh University, Gauhati University and Assam University.

“We have established our hold in three universities and 65 per cent of the colleges in the state. Now NSUI is the biggest students’ union in Assam. In this election at Gauhati University, the All-Assam Students Union and Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad jointly fought against us but failed. We now have nine candidates in the union,” Bora said.

A third semester student of the Hindi department, Pragyan Bhuyan, was elected the vice-president of the union, defeating his close rival Surajit Saikia.

Kishore Das, Angan Jyoti Hazarika, Meenakshi Devi, Ajit Daimary, Kalyani Devi, Gunamoni Kalita and Bhabajit Bezbaruah were elected as literary, cultural, debate and symposia, sports, girls’ common room, gymnasium and social service secretary.

Earlier, the university authorities declared three candidates — Ganesh Bordoloi, Manash Pratim Sarma and Sansumoi Basumatary — uncontested winners in the posts of assistant general secretary, music secretary and major games secretary posts, respectively.

While 25 candidates were in the fray for different posts in the elections, an almost equal number, 24, of nomination papers were either withdrawn or cancelled on various grounds.