Clean the place, will allow counting of votes: Delhi HC tells DUSU candidates

The Delhi high court on Wednesday asked the Delhi University Students Union (DUSU) election candidates to clean the defacement in the campus and said it would permit counting of votes the next day, if the public property is restored.
“Why don’t you clean up the place? If you clean, we’ll allow (counting of votes). So much dirt. Please ensure that people clean up the places. Get all the posters & the stickers removed. We’ll allow the counting to take up the next day. We don’t want the voting to be withheld,” a bench led by chief justice Manmohan said to the counsels representing two candidates who had contested the polls.
A bench also comprising justice Tushar Rao Gedela, however, expressed displeasure at the huge amount of money pumped by the candidates during the polls underlining that the same “involved laundering of money and corruption by the students” and was “worse than general elections”.
“How much money have you pumped up in the election? Free food is being distributed. What are you people doing? What are you becoming? The university today is not taking the leadership. The problem today is that there is a lack of leadership. A large number of candidates are from the law faculty. Students must have an attachment to the college. It’s a festival of democracy, it’s not a festival of money laundering. At times society loses connect with reality. It’s wrong,” the court said.
The court was responding to an application filed by two candidates who had contested the polls, to be impleaded as a party in the plea seeking action against the prospective candidates who were involved in defacement. In its application, the candidates who had contested for the post of vice president in Campus Law Centre-2 and secretary in Ramjas College asserted that they would clean the defacement in the premises in coordination with the DU and Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and get the walls repainted.
On September 26, the court had allowed DU to proceed with the polls, which were scheduled for September 27, but had halted counting the votes, till it is satisfied about removal of defacement and restoration of public property. Though the bench acceded to the varsity’s request of going ahead with the polls, it asked the varsity to pay for the expenses incurred by the civic agency including MCD, DMRC for cleaning the defaced properties and later recover it from the candidates.
Blaming the varsity for the mess and “vitiating the elections”, defacement and incurring of expenditure in crores by the candidates, the court said, it happened due to the varsity’s lack of supervision, monitoring, will, courage and authority. The court also criticised the varsity for only acting against the candidates, following the court’s directions, saying that the varsity was “merrily going around without taking a stand” and was allowing its standards to fall.