Aneesh Sriram UG'25
This article is in followup to the events pertaining to the assent of the election code and the process of commencement of the election cycle in Ashoka, nearly after two years. The Constitution Drafting Committee along with the Election Commission met with the DSA and a consensus was reached. This might be the final round of negotiations leading up to the start of the election cycle, in 2023. Nevertheless, independent candidates and parties such as the Leher have signaled an unofficial beginning of campaigning, highlighting the issues they intend to address. This serves as a sort of soft opening for the upcoming candidates to announce their campaigns.
The Edict, after interviewing the CDC and the EC after their meeting with the DSA has gathered the following updates:
The legal council of the University has proposed certain changes to the constitution, which has been accepted by the stakeholders. This includes bringing the ambit of the constitution under the National, State, UGC, and Ashoka statutory bodies. In principle, this change will not affect the day-to-day functioning of the SG. Another change to note here is the power of the VC and the governing body to ratify the constitution which has been made explicit , in contrast to the previous version where this was implicitly understood. Additionally, the notion of the governing body ratifying the constitution has been accepted by the members of the student representatives.
More importantly, the Registrar conveyed the approval of the constitution and the code by the DSA to the board. This nod would be the criteria that the Board of Management was looking for to approve the process.
After the registrar had met with the BoM, the penultimate phase of approval was complete. The final phase involves approval from the Governing Body - a smaller group consisting of some Founders, the Chancellor, and Vice-Chancellor, and the Secretary to the Government, the Haryana Education Department. There is a high probability the elections will be held in April, before the summer break, on a single day. In addition, it is also expected that the EC will start building up its institutional capacity by inducting more people to facilitate the process of the election cycle over the coming weeks.
The process of constitution drafting and approval has lasted for nearly a year. One can only hope that the following weeks will spell the future of politics in Ashoka. The student’s protest on Monday the 27th of March saw repeated calls, from across the spectrum, for a return to a fully functioning political scene and Student Government at Ashoka. It is understood that we are inching toward the realization of that demand.
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