JNU starts counting, row over declaring result trends

NEW DELHI: The counting of votes began at Jawaharlal Nehru University on Saturday afternoon after much deliberation and confusion as Delhi high court had on Friday directed it to not announce the election results in view of a plea.
Members of the election committee (EC) of JNU said that they took the decision on counting after discussions with all political parties. The EC said that it would not reveal the results and would only declare a few trends, which they began to give from 7pm on Saturday.The JNU administration and the lawyer of the petitioner, however, objected to this and said that any announcement of even the trends would amount to contempt of court.
Chief election commissioner Shashank Patel said that “the counting process which was started on September 6 at 11.55pm had to be put on hold because there had been a deadlock situation between the student community and the grievance redressal committee (GRC).”
Patel accepted that a consensus could not be reached between the EC and GRC so they decided to “resume the counting process with declaration of trends but the final result will be withhold”.
Another EC member said that the EC would not reveal trends for the last 50 votes for councillors and the last 150 votes for central panel.
Chairman of GRC Umesh Kadam said that “we explained to the EC that they should not give out trends as that would mean a violation of the court order. We had written to them that if they reveal trends then it would be contempt of court and we will inform the court about this on September 17.”
He said that the committee told EC that the counting could be started and “the trends should be sealed till we go to court”. Kadam also alleged that there were complaints that four outsiders were present in the polling booth on Friday. He also complained that none of the GRC members were given entry by the EC members.