The Calicut University’s fresh notification for elections to its Syndicate comes around a year after the culmination of the Senate polls by June 2023.
The Syndicate polls are now scheduled to be held between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. on June 8. The counting of votes will be held from 2.30 p.m. Members of the Syndicate are chosen from among the Senate members. For around a year, the Syndicate had only members nominated by the State government. The Syndicate has ex-officio members, those nominated by the government, and others elected from among the over 100 Senate members through a preferential voting system. Of this, the election to pick a student representative is held separately.
The elections were earlier scheduled for February this year. However, it was the rejection of the candidature of P. Raveendran, Professor, Department of Chemistry, and T.M. Vasudevan, Professor, Department of Library and Information Science, both nominated to the Senate by Chancellor and Governor Arif Mohammed Khan, which initially led to Mr. Khan staying the process. Both Mr. Raveendran and Mr. Vasudevan are members of a Congress-aligned union of university teachers. The returning officer had contended that their candidature was not valid as they had not been elected to the Senate. Thus, the university authorities claimed that they could not contest the election from the constituency of university teachers.
The stay order was subsequently challenged in the Kerala High Court by K. Mohammed Haneefa, a Left-aligned candidate for the Syndicate polls. The court restricted the Chancellor from taking any action on the petitions filed by Mr. Raveendran and Mr. Vasudevan. There were some other petitions as well in the High Court, filed by other Senate members, highlighting the delay in the election process. The court thereafter directed the Chancellor to hear all the affected parties and take a decision in accordance with the provisions of the Acts and Statutes.
During the hearing, it was pointed out that in 2013, Mr. Vasudevan had contested the Syndicate election after being nominated to the Senate by the Chancellor under the category ‘Head of the Department’. The Chancellor asked the returning officer to accept both their nomination papers and resume the election process.
The elections are significant this time because the Chancellor has nominated nine persons close to the Sangh Parivar to the Senate. This could lead to at least one member affiliated to the Sangh Parivar getting elected to the Syndicate. The CPI(M) is likely to get at least nine seats this time as it has the backing of almost 65 members in the Senate.
In the previous Syndicate, 11 members were aligned to the Left while two others belonged to the Indian Union Muslim League. The Congress failed to get any of its candidates elected. One seat remained vacant.
