Cuttack, Aug 1: Members of Ravenshaw Bikash Abhijan have urged the university authorities to continue with the age-old practice of holding direct election to the students' union in the interest of democratic norms and tradition of the institution.

Ravenshaw Bikash Abhijan (RBA), which is a consortium of city-based socio-political activists and old student leaders, submitted a memorandum to the university vice-chancellor on Monday.

"We are hopeful that the democratic process will be retained for the selection of representatives to the students' union as the vice-chancellor while receiving our memorandum assured us that even if the process of direct election was eliminated ballot voting would be adopted," former president of Ravenshaw College (1971) and RBA president Chittaranjan Mohanty said today. The Ravenshaw University's executive council has decided to keep in abeyance the process of holding direct election to the students' union till an alternative was decided.

Accordingly, the university had constituted a committee to recommend an alternative model of representation to the students' union. On July 18, it issued a notice inviting views of parents, students and civil society groups to help the committee "design an alternative model of representation of students".

The notice also claimed that direct elections caused disturbances in teaching at the university. The RBA said in its memorandum: "Switching over to an indirect mode of students representation is ill-conceived and totally uncalled for". "The Ravenshaw University does not match up to the minimum standards of an university with pathetic state of teaching and non-teaching staff, the primitive state of classrooms, teaching aids, laboratories and library," Mohanty said in the memorandum, regretting that very little had been done in the last two and half years to improve the standard of the university.

"These are more vital prerequisites for imparting education and without improving these aspects, the quality education will not improve even if an alternative model of selection of representatives to students union is adopted," Mohanty said.

Vice-chancellor Prakash Chandra Sarangi told The Telegraph: "The committee is expected to come up with its recommendation shortly." He further said that the option of alternative model of representation of students was explored to prevent use of money, muscle power and violence in the election to the students' union.

Admissions to all courses will be completed by August 12. The students' union elections for 2017-18 will be due after that.