Delhi High Court threatens to halt Delhi University vote count

A Delhi High Court bench warned it could halt the counting of votes in the Delhi University Students’ Union elections after reports of violence on the final day of campaigning, according to Scroll.in. The court ordered Delhi University, Delhi Police and India’s Union government to file status reports on what action had been taken against those responsible. The hearing followed allegations of assaults and clashes across multiple campuses.

The incidents described in court filings are the kind that student-election rules were written to prevent. Scroll.in reports that a teacher was allegedly assaulted at Motilal Nehru College (Evening) when a group of students tried to enter during campaigning; elsewhere on the north campus a clash broke out outside Law Centre-I after an argument over campaign banners. Rival student groups traded accusations: the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), linked to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, said three of its members were injured, while the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI), linked to the Congress party, alleged that workers connected to ABVP attacked one of its Adivasi student members—an allegation ABVP denied. The court’s remarks, as quoted by Scroll.in, referred to “thrashing your own teachers” and “brandishing guns,” and suggested the authorities had failed to keep the process orderly.

Delhi University’s student elections are formally meant to be insulated from party politics, but the institutional plumbing runs the other way. The Lyngdoh Committee recommendations—commissioned by India’s Supreme Court in 2005 to curb violence and unrest—set out constraints such as age limits for candidates and rules intended to keep campuses from becoming proxy battlegrounds for national parties. Yet the court noted repeated violations of those recommendations and of judicial orders “issued over time,” implying a cycle in which rules are announced, then ignored until the next outbreak forces another round of assurances.

The immediate stakes are procedural: the election was scheduled for Friday with counting on Saturday, and the court said it could stay the counting and declaration of results if the responses were unsatisfactory. The broader stakes are reputational and administrative. When a university tells a court it cannot control campaigning on its own campuses, it is also signaling to students and staff that enforcement depends on outside intervention. That, in turn, raises the value of intimidation for groups willing to use it, because disruption becomes a tool for shaping outcomes or delegitimising results after the fact.

The bench directed the university, police and central government to report back by Friday. The counting of votes, the court indicated, is now contingent on whether those status reports describe consequences rather than another set of promises.