PU syndicate polls: Navdeep Goyal group clinches 13 seats

CHANDIGARH: The Navdeep Goyal group retained its majority and the Ashok Goyal group made a comeback in the Panjab University (PU) syndicate in the syndicate elections on Monday. While 11 members won unopposed from faculty of law, arts, combined and science, the faculty of medical sciences and language witnessed neck to neck competition between the candidates of the two groups.As many as 13 members were elected from the Navdeep Goyal group and two members were elected from the Ashok Goyal group.
While the votes of the medical faculty were being counted, the registrar of the university went inside the polling booth. On this, Ashok Goyal raised objection stating that only the returning officer should be present at the time of counting of votes.
Ashok Goyal got 20 votes, the highest in the medical faculty. However, there was a tie between Rajat Sandhir and R K Mahajan at 19 votes. The Navdeep Goyal group insisted that since both the members were from their group, each should get a term of six months in the syndicate. But, the Ashok Goyal group did not agree to this and demanded re-polling. After deliberations and intervention of the returning officer at the booth, it was decided that re-polling will be done.
Sources, however, said the members of the Navdeep Goyal group unanimously, including Sandhir, decided to vote for Mahajan. Following this, re-polling took place and Mahajan registered a win by securing 21 votes. After re-polling, Sandhir got six votes.
Though the Ashok Goyal group enjoyed a stronghold in the language and medical faculty, the group had not contested elections even on these two faculties last year. This year, Keshav Malhotra, who is strong in the language faculty, won by a margin of one vote only. Besides Malhotra, BJP’s Subhash Sharma also registered a win from the language faculty by securing 20 votes.
Navdeep Goyal, the prominent face of the University politics, won unopposed from the combined faculty. Besides Navdeep, Anita Kaushal and Satish Kumar also won unopposed from the combined faculty. From the faculty of arts, Dr Ameer Sultana, Prof Ronki Ram and Sanjay Tandon won unopposed. Amit Joshi, Prabhjeet Singh and Surinder Singh Sangha won unopposed from the faculty of science. Gurjot Singh Malhi, IPS (Retd) and Inderpal Singh Sidhu also won unopposed from the faculty of law.
Last year, it was a landslide win for the Navdeep Goyal group since all the seats were won unopposed and the Ashok Goyal group did not contest the polls