The students’ union elections have been cancelled at five colleges as incidents of pre-poll violence kept the campuses across the State on the boil on Tuesday.
To prevent student unrest from spiralling to large scale violence, authorities of Rajdhani College, Maharishi College of Natural Law and City Women’s College in Bhubaneswar declared polls cancelled sine die . Earlier, polls were cancelled in SCS College in Puri and Dhamnagar College in Bhadrak district.
Tuesday (October 6) was the last date of withdrawal of nomination in colleges. Nominations of many candidates were rejected as they could not fulfil the criteria of 75 per cent attendance.
Violence erupted in city’s Maharishi College of Natural Law where two groups of students came in confrontations. They besieged the office of principal after rejection of candidature of a student. They also sat on dharna in front of the college gate. Assessing that the situation would not improve during elections, the authority decided to call off the elections.
Similar was the situation in Rajadhani College where students locked up main gate of college protesting elimination of names from the final list of candidates. Miscreants hurled hand-made bombs at women’s hostel on campus of Ram Devi Women’s University here on Tuesday. Although no one was injured, it created a panic among students. After girls pleaded before college authorities not to cancel the polls saying it was an attempt to scuttle the process, authorities refrained from taking any drastic decision.
At Dhenkanal, 75 km from here, the police had to resort to lathi charge after students clashed among themselves. In Bikramdev College, Jeypore, pre-poll violence also took the sheen off the polls. Authorities of Utkal University had also decided not to hold elections stating situation was not favourable for the poll this year.
