DSJ students barred form voting over non-payment of semester fees

New Delhi: The recently held inaugural student representative elections for Delhi University's Delhi School of Journalism (DSJ) caused a furore, after faculty members allegedly barred students who did not pay their semester fee from voting and the entire elections were called off in the end.

Students said that the elections held on February 24, which were supposed to signify the emergence of democracy in less than a year of the institution, were marred by the controversy.

A section of students started protesting against being stopped from voting, following which members of the faculty eventually allowed those students to vote.

However, the protesting students rejected this idea, and demanded that voting be started afresh.

They said that the faculty's proposal was only aimed at pacifying the protestors and the votes cast later were not even counted.

Soon, a DSJ student called Kunal Sehrawat, vice-president of Delhi University Students' Union (DUSU), who began arguing with the faculty members. It finally came to an end, after Manasvini M Yogi, Officer on Special Duty, intervened.

According to the DSJ students, the meeting did not reach an amicable end.

Both parties reportedly agreed that the decision on having fresh elections for the Students Represent post will be decided by the Dean, Students' Welfare (DSW).

Talking about the protests, a senior official of DSJ said, "Certain students were not allowed to vote because they did not pay the semester fee, despite reminders and the fact that the last date of fee submission had passed. Technically, these students are not university students as of now."

Responding to these allegations, a DSJ student said, "We were not even given the fee submission link on time. There are students who were sent the link later, and by the time they began logging in, the link had expired. We duly informed the faculty about it, but they did not care. Now the blame is on us. This isn't fair."

"When we paid our first-semester fee, we also paid an amount that was charged for the whole year, like the electricity bill, media lab charges, etc. So, it is not as if we have not paid the fee at all," Mohammed Ali, a student of DSJ, said.