The elections for the Mess Representatives were conducted on the 19th of August along with the elections for the Hostel Representatives and the by-elections for the General Secretary. While almost all posts saw their candidates elected without incident, the Malaviya Mess Representative was elected under rather interesting circumstances. Mohit Kedia lost to Ayush Kumar after being slapped with a 5% vote cut for violating the campaign regulations. To get a first-hand account, the English Press Club spoke to the Election Commissioner of the SSMS EC, Manas Gupta.

It was less than an hour to go before polling when the SSMS EC was made aware that Mohit Kedia had, in violation of campaigning policies, asked people on his department’s Whatsapp group to vote for a candidate who was contesting for the General Secretary’s post.

The SSMS EC’s first response was to put up notices at the polling stations informing the GBM of the incident, and leave it to the GBM’s discretion to judge the severity of the offence. At that time, the campus was facing a power-cut, and the notices could not be printed at S9 or Connaught in time for polling. The presence of two polling stations at Malaviya Block A and Block C did not make communication any easier, with multiple notices having to be put up simultaneously. This idea was thus dropped, and the SSMS EC began evaluating other options. The SSMS EC concluded that imposing a 5% reduction in the percentage of votes cast in favour of Kedia would be a “fair decision”. Professor Sachin Belgamwar, the faculty-in-charge of the SSMS EC, approved of the decision and the candidates were informed The vote cut ended up changing the outcome of the elections, with Ayush Kumar winning by a margin of less than 1% (0.33 votes) of the total votes cast. Manas remarked that there had been no precedent of imposing a vote cut for similar offences, but was under the impression that it was not an unheard-of procedure in other elections on campus.

While the EC is bound to inform the GBM of any penalties imposed due to violations of campaign policy, the SSMS EC, without a charter to go by, was not legally required to inform the GBM of this incident. Manas however, reminded us that they did in fact put in efforts to print out notices, but were delayed by the power-cut. The SSMS EC is a body in its infancy that requires a charter and Manas indicated that a meeting would soon take place with the SSMS President and Secretary to lay out a constitution