JnUCSU polls: Shibir-backed candidates lead in partial results

Despite a long delay after the completion of voting in the Jagannath University Central Students’ Union (JnUCSU) elections, the vote-counting process has made little progress. Of the total 39 polling centres, only partial results from four centres have been announced so far.

Assistant Election Commissioner Dr Anisur Rahman announced the results from the central control room at around 7:30am on Wednesday (7 January).

According to the published results, centre-based vote counting in the Departments of Geography and Environment, Anthropology, Public Administration and Pharmacy shows that candidates for the posts of vice-president (VP), general secretary (GS) and assistant general secretary (AGS) from the Islami Chhatra Shibir-backed Odommo Jobian Oikya panel are in the lead. For the VP post, the panel’s candidate Riazul Islam is ahead. Similarly, Abdul Alim Arif is leading in the GS race, while Masud Rana is ahead in the AGS contest.

For the VP post, Shibir-backed candidate Riazul Islam secured 100, 128, 122 and 78 votes respectively in the four departments, bringing his total to 428 votes. Meanwhile, Chhatra Dal-backed candidate Rakib received 91, 118, 132 and 53 votes, totalling 394. Chhatra Front candidate Kishor Samya received 17 votes.

In the GS race, Shibir-backed candidate Abdul Alim received 90, 123, 123 and 83 votes respectively in the four departments, totalling 419 votes. Chhatra Dal-backed candidate Khadijatul Kobra secured 45, 73, 62 and 26 votes, bringing her total to 206. Left-leaning candidate Ivan Tahsiv received 39, 46, 59 and 13 votes, totalling 157. Vote figures for Chhatra Shakti candidate Faisal Murad were not available.

For the AGS post, Shibir-backed candidate Masud Rana received 98, 102, 130 and 78 votes across the four departments, bringing his total to 408. Chhatra Dal-backed candidate Atikur Rahman Tanjil secured 85, 126, 106 and 45 votes, totalling 362.

The Election Commission said the delay in vote counting was due to technical issues. Briefing reporters at the central control room, Assistant Election Commissioner Professor Dr Shahidul Islam said discrepancies between results generated by two machines necessitated additional verification to ensure uniform and accurate outcomes before proceeding further.

Earlier, at around 1:00am, Professor Shahidul Islam said votes from a centre with around 300 ballots were first counted manually. The same ballots were then reprocessed through two OMR machines. The machine whose results matched the manual count would be used to process votes from all remaining centres. In line with this decision, recounting began with 278 ballots from the Anthropology Department.

At around 9:20pm on Tuesday, technical faults in the vote-counting machines forced a temporary suspension of the entire process. After the issue was resolved, vote counting resumed following a long delay.

Voting at all 39 centres was held on Tuesday (6 January) from 9:00am to 3:00pm, with turnout recorded at 65 percent.