JU poll push: SFI seeks governor Ananda Bose’s help
Telegraph | 26 December 2025
Supporters of the CPM students’ wing at Jadavpur University requested the governor’s intervention on Wednesday to reinstate campus elections, which have been suspended in universities since 2020.
The SFI supporters staged demonstrations when governor C.V. Ananda Bose, the chancellor of state-aided universities, came to attend the university’s annual convocation.
An SFI team later met with Bose to press their demands.
A similar demand had greeted state education minister Bratya Basu when he came to the campus in March.
“Students have every right to speak their mind, particularly in a democratic setup. These are issues that are to be considered by the government,” the governor said about Wednesday’s protests.
“Protest is a right of the students, especially in a democratic society. The authorities should listen to them and see how they should tackle that,” he said.
Asked whether he will speak to the state government so the campus elections resume, the chancellor said: “Let me go through their applications. I have been told that the students are going to give me a memorandum. If they want to give it to me, I will certainly receive it.”
On August 26, the state government told Calcutta High Court that it was up to the vice-chancellors to decide whether student elections would be held in universities and affiliated colleges — a shift from the state’s earlier stance.
Campus elections have been stalled in government and government-aided colleges since 2013.
Campus elections were last held in unitary universities like Jadavpur and Presidency in January 2020.
The court is hearing petitions demanding the resumption of the student elections.
Although the state left it to the VCs to conduct the polls, there has not been any student election to date.
“Unless the state government issues a central directive, the resumption of campus polls is not possible. We doubt whether the campus elections will be held in the run-up to the Assembly elections,” said a vice-chancellor.
“SFI has filed the petition seeking the resumption of campus polls. When our delegation met the chancellor, we sought his intervention to resume campus polls. We also sought his intervention to resolve the fund constraints that the university is encountering,” Chintan Biswas, the secretary of the SFI arts faculty unit at JU, said.
While expressing his concerns over instances of violence in JU, the chancellor said an “elected government” would decide whether there was a need to set up a police outpost on the campus.
After a section of extreme-Left students heckled the education minister on the campus in March, Kolkata Police wrote to the JU authorities about setting a police outpost on the campus.