With the election fervour having set in the Delhi University campus, the one thing that’s being abundantly done other than the defacement of walls in the city and littering of flyers all over roads is the flouting of the lyngdoh committee guidelines and the code of conduct. However, students are getting away with it as they have several ready mechanisms to escape the brunt. Be it putting up posters with different spellings of candidate names or handing out printed material for the purpose of campaigning, student unions are only becoming street smarter by each election.
like every other year, even before the nomination papers have been filed by candidates, walls of the North Campus are donned with posters of proposed candidates from the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and National Students’ Union of India (NSUI). While the same violates the Delhi Prevention of Defacement of Property Act 2007, code of conduct and the lyngdoh committee rules, the university cannot take any action against them.
According to university officials, since nomination papers have not been filed, they cannot consider it a violation under the code of conduct or the lyngdoh committee rules. “The names on the posters are of supposed candidates. Since the university does not acknowledge student unions, the candidates considered for disqualification need to have filed nomination papers,” said an official.
However, even after nomination papers have been filed by the candidates, there is only little that the officials can do because the names on the posters never match the ones in the paper. “The names are always either written in the different spelling or are changed in some way. We all know that these are the wrong spellings of the students who are actually planning to file in the nominations for elections. But the candidate cannot be held responsible for the posters because these are not their names. This leaves us helpless because the law doesn’t allow us to do anything,” informed the official.
On the other hand, student unions like to go with the flow and claim that they have no idea who puts up these posters. State president ABVP Saket Bahuguna said, “As far as posters of the organisation are concerned, they are put up only on the walls of democracy
which has been given to us for that purpose. There is no law we are breaking. As for the flyers on the roads and posters of candidates on other walls, we have not put them because we are yet to finalise our candidates.”
Meanwhile, the police have already registered two cases under the Delhi Prevention of Defacement of Property Act, 2007. “A meeting of all the candidates was convened and directions have been given to not deface the walls. There is a wall of democracy for this purpose and such violations of law won’t be tolerated. The beat staff has been alerted to keep a check on this especially during late hours,” said Deputy Commissioner of Police (North) Madhur Verma.