‘Tuseed was unfit to fight DUSU polls’

Nearly a month before his tenure as president of the Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) came to an end, the Delhi High Court on Friday upheld the disqualification of Rocky Tuseed’s candidature by the varsity, saying that he could not have contested the election.

Justice V.K. Rao said Mr. Tuseed had assaulted a student in his college for which he was barred from entering the campus despite his apology and had not disclosed this information in his nomination form, leading to a violation of the Lyngdoh Committee recommendations.

The court noted that the Lyngdoh Committee recommendations “clearly stipulates if a candidate had faced disciplinary action, the same would be a non-eligibility for such a student to stand in the election”.

“The affidavit given by the petitioner (Tuseed) that he was not subject to any disciplinary action by the university authorities was not correct,” it said.

The observations came while dismissing Mr. Tuseed’s plea challenging disqualification of his candidature by the varsity on September 6 last year.

“The issue raised in the present petition (of Tuseed) goes to the root whether the petitioner could have at all stood for election to the post of president. The answer to which is ‘No’. In view of the above discussion, this court is of the view that the challenge to the communication of September 6, 2017, rejecting the representation of the petitioner and treating the petitioner to be ineligible for the post of DUSU president, cannot be faulted,” the court said.

It also said in its order that the Supreme Court has accepted the Lyngdoh Committee recommendations whose underlying spirit was that a person should have a clean record for standing in the election and it “cannot be lost sight of”.