New Delhi: Students of Delhi University on Friday turned out to cast their votes to elect their next union, with election authorities expecting a turnout of nearly 40 per cent.
The turnout, though moderate, was better than last year, when heavy rains had played spoilsport and not more than 35 per cent of students had voted.
The capital was hit by light showers today also but students kept turning out in a steady flow.
As is the norm, the morning colleges witnessed a better turnout than the evening ones.
"The polling was largely peaceful and went on smoothly. Taking both the morning and evening percentages into account, we are expecting a figure of 35 to 40 per cent," said Prof CS Dubey, the chief election officer.
Among the colleges that saw a good turnout was Hansraj where 2355 students turned out to vote, Ramjas college where 2291 students cast their votes and Kirorimal college where 2171 votes were polled.
Besides, 1696 votes were polled at Hindu college and 1696 at ARSD college.
The counting will begin at 9 AM tomorrow and the result will be declared at 1 PM.
A total of 38 candidates were contesting for the four posts of President, Vice President, Secretary and Joint Secretary.
For the top post of President, the direct face-off appears to be between NSUI’s Arun Hooda and ABVP’s Ankit Dhananjoy Choudhary.
"The turnout was good and we believe this augurs well for us. Despite rains students did turn out to vote. And I believe, the inflation in general and the diesel price hike introduced yesterday must have driven a number of students to vote in our favour," said ABVP’s state president Rohit Chahal.
The ABVP has for the last two years rode on the anti-corruption and anti-incumbency factors to score well against the Congress`s student wing NSUI.
Last year, the NSUI won the prestigious post of president but lost out the other three panel posts to ABVP.
"We are satisfied with the turnout. The rain did not play spoils sport this time. It started when the polling was ending for the morning colleges and ended before the evening polling began. We are confident of a good show," said NSUI spokesperson Amrish Pandey.
Supporters of different parties, including ABVP, NSUI, SFI and AISA, kept visiting hostels, college canteens throughout the day to persuade studnets to go to the polling stations.
A total of 984 EVM machines were put up today across the university.
Apart from polling in colleges, the administration had set up 50 voting centers under 12 clusters for convenience of over 86,000 voters.
PTI
