The elections for Hostel Representatives, Mess Representatives, and Hostel Sports Secretaries (HReps, Mess Reps and Games Reps) took place on the 18th of August, 2019. The election was conducted by three bodies—the Election Commission (EC), the SSMS Election Commission (SSMS EC), and the Student Welfare Division (SWD) for the above positions respectively. 26 and 20 candidates contested for the HRep and Mess Reps positions respectively. Ram, Budh, Malviya-A, and Malviya-B saw very active participation while hostels such as Bhagirath, Rana Pratap, and Ashok witnessed candidates contest unopposed.
The General Secretary, Abishek Balaji expressed his dissatisfaction with many aspects of the elections. He felt that not enough people in Srinivas Ramanujan (SR) Bhawan knew about the election process, and that simply putting up posters on mess boards was not sufficient information.
He further complained that voting in Krishna Bhawan started 25 minutes late due to representatives of the conducting bodies—namely EC and SSMS EC—not being present on time. The wardens, who supervise the elections, were also forced to wait. According to the General Secretary, the Chief Warden was less than pleased, ‘[he] called the wardens, all who appeared on time. It looks bad on his part’. In spite of the delays in starting the voting, polling ended sharply at the stipulated time of 4 PM. The General Secretary believed that the reduced voting period further decreased voter participation in elections that ‘people don’t participate in general’.
Balaji cited the example of the losing candidate for Ram-Budh Mess Rep (Manan Batheja) who lost by merely 4 votes. ‘He [Batheja] told me that if polling were extended there might have been a more definitive result’, said Balaji. Batheja also reached out to the Press and alleged that the contesting candidate pushed his supporters to the front of the line at around 4 PM, when polling was about to end. This, in Batheja’s opinion, skewed the election result.
Balaji cited many problems he had with the SSMS EC guidelines, including a case where the coordinator of the Peer Mentorship Program (PMP) was allowed to contest for the Mess Rep elections for VKB Mess, even when ‘the SSMS guidelines stated that no PMP members could take part in its elections.
He felt that the guidelines were written informally and that there were many restrictions placed on Mess Rep candidates with respect to their campaigning process. For example, the campaigning process started with the mess debates, rather than communicating directly with the GBM. Also, there was a restriction on the number of people who were allowed to campaign for a candidate, making it very hard to effectively convey their manifesto points. Balaji said that he would bring up this issue with the Chief Warden, although he couldn’t do much about it in his position.
An EC representative said that most of the delays in the election process occurred because the members of the SSMS EC were recently inducted and didn’t have sufficient experience. He claimed that this led to logistical issues that caused the delay in polling in certain Bhawans.
The SSMS EC representative asserted that no regulations were broken. He said that the PMP has an independence policy that allowed their members to contest for all but the highest-ranking positions in the SU and the SSMS. The regulations for the elections were framed before the PMP formally declared their independence policy, hence it seemed that there was a breach of regulations when in reality there wasn’t. On the restrictions on the number of campaigners, the representative said that the rules were already in place, but they hadn’t been enforced strictly in the past. This year, however, they had a significant increase in the number of candidates for Mess Rep, so the total number of campaigners also increased. The campaigning period was also extended, though it came at the expense of having an early mess debate.
He admitted that there were delays on their part and that, ‘a delay of 10 minutes can rub off the wrong way, leading to complications.’ He added, ‘We encountered a few logistical issues, hence the delay. But in many Bhawans, the problems in logistics was not our fault. Some of it was our fault, while some others weren’t’.
With regards to Batheja narrowly losing the Ram-Budh Mess Rep elections, a complaint was registered. To investigate the matter, they had to delay the results of the elections by a day. However, as most of the evidence was based on written testimonies of a handful of GBM members, the evidence was found to be inconclusive and the case was closed.
The results for HReps were announced immediately following vote counting, with the official root mail being sent on the 20th of August, two days after the election. The results for the Mess Rep elections came on the 22nd, two days after that.