JUCSU Vote Counting Ends After Long 45-Hour

After a prolonged 45-hour wait, the vote counting for the Jahangirnagar University Central Students’ Union (JUCSU) election has finally concluded. Authorities attributed the extended duration to the manual vote-counting process.

Around noon, at a press conference, JUCSU’s Chief Election Commissioner, Professor Muniruzzaman, stated that the vote counting for the Jahangirnagar University (JU) Central Students’ Union election would be completed by 2:00 PM. However, the final results will be officially announced at 7:00 PM today, Saturday.

In this year’s JUCSU election, approximately 68 percent of the 11,759 registered voters cast their ballots. A total of 177 candidates contested for 25 posts in the central union, including 9 candidates for the Vice-President (VP) post, 8 for the General Secretary (GS) post, and 16 for the Assistant General Secretary (AGS) post. The number of female candidates was 6.

A total of eight full and partial panels participated in the election. However, allegations of irregularities led five panels, including one supported by Chhatra Dal, to boycott the election after voting began. The boycotting panels included the Progressive Students’ Unity, Bangladesh Chhatra Union and Chhatra Front’s ‘Sangshaptak Parishad,’ and the independent candidates’ ‘Angikar Parishad.’ Additionally, a splinter group of Chhatra Front and several independent candidates also declared their boycott of the voting process.

In this election, 11,897 students from the university’s 21 residential halls were eligible to vote, including 6,115 male and 5,728 female students. To facilitate voting, 224 booths were set up across 21 polling centers.

The voter breakdown for male residential halls is as follows:

• Al Beruni Hall: 210 voters
• A F M Kamaluddin Hall: 333 voters
• Mir Mosharraf Hossain Hall: 464 voters
• Shahid Salam-Barkat Hall: 298 voters
• Mawlana Bhashani Hall: 514 voters
• Shahid Rafiq-Jabbar Hall: 650 voters
• Bishwakabi Rabindranath Tagore Hall: 350 voters
• Hall No. 21: 735 voters
• Jatiya Kabi Nazrul Hall: 992 voters
• Tajuddin Ahmad Hall: 947 voters