JUCSU election: Commission hopes to announce results by 11:00 pm

Polling for Jahangirnagar University Central Students’ Union (JUCSU) began at 9:00 am on Thursday and ended at 5:00 pm. In some halls however, the voting continued till much later. The counting of votes had still not been completed by the afternoon today, Friday and therefore no results have been declared either.

The total number of registered voters in the JUCSU election was 11,743, with a turnout of around 67 to 68 per cent. For the central union, 177 candidates contested for 25 posts. Nine contested the vice-president (VP) post and eight contested the general secretary (GS) post.

In the 10 female halls of residence, out of 150 positions, 59 had no candidates. In 67 positions there was only one candidate, meaning only 24 positions went to the polls. In two of the university’s 21 halls, candidates were elected unopposed.

The delay in counting and announcing results has caused concern and frustration among students. University proctor and member secretary of the election commission, AKM Rashidul Alam, mentioned several reasons for the delay.

“The initial issues causing delays in the count have now been overcome. With the manpower available and the preparations taken today, we expect to finish the hall-level vote counts by the afternoon and to complete the full count and announce the unofficial results between 10:00 and 11:00 pm,” he said. However, last night he had suggested that the results would be available by Friday afternoon.

Rashidul Alam said, preparations had been made to use OMR machines for the counting. But following requests from several candidates, it was decided to carry out the count manually. So, it was only natural that a manual count would take more time.

He added, although the polling was scheduled to begin at 9:00 am, it was delayed in two halls. In a few halls, the process was briefly suspended midway. In particular, voting progressed very slowly until midday in two large halls with more than a thousand voters each. Later, a large number of students queued up between 4:30 pm and 5:00 pm.

According to rules, all of them had to be allowed to cast their votes. As a result, the ballot boxes from those centres did not arrive until about 9:30 pm. Counting could not start until all ballot boxes arrived, which pushed the beginning of the count to around 10:00 pm, he said.

The proctor cited several other reasons for the delays saying, “Since everyone had not been fully prepared or did not have full knowledge about the manual counting system in advance, the process moved slowly at first. However the pace improved later.”

“Also, counting began in the Senate building on five tables (one table for one hall), each monitored by CCTV. Later, the number of tables was increased to 10 this morning, with additional cameras installed so that the process could be observed by all and be recorded,” he continued.

Rashidul Alam also mentioned a few other issues. He said, “Although many polling officers from the halls were present last night, polling agents were absent in several cases. Ballot boxes should ideally be opened and counted in front of polling agents.”

“Plus, the presence of the respective returning officer is mandatory. We also tried to ensure that. But because the poling agents from some halls were not present, the vote counting process was delayed,” he added.

Meanwhile, students expressed anger at the delay in declaring results. Tanvir Ahmed, a student of the mathematics department from the 49th batch, told Prothom Alo, “Out of the university’s 21 halls, two had candidates elected unopposed. Of the rest, counting votes from each hall is taking about an hour.”

“A hall union has total 15 posts. After the hall unions, there are still JUCSU’s 25 posts to count, which will take at least twice as long. Based on consensus from the panels that still remain in the race and have not withdrawn, the count should be done using OMR machines,” he added.

Umme Habiba, a student of the physics department from the 48th batch said, “We’ve been waiting for the results since last evening. Nobody is able to say for sure when the counting will finish. This waiting is ruining the excitement of the JUCSU election. The administration must take steps to announce the results fast.”