The voting for the 10 seats of the University of Mumbai (MU) senate's graduate constituency was conducted at 38 centres and 64 booths across the city and Konkan region after the Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to halt the elections.
The Special Leave Petition (SLP), filed by the city-based lawyer Siddharth Ingle against the Bombay High Court's (HC) refusal to stay elections, came up for hearing in the afternoon even as the voting process had already been underway since the morning. Since the substantial part of the voting was over, the court didn't see any point in intervening in the issue and asked the petitioner if they wanted to withdraw their plea, which they did.
While more than 13,000 voters had registered, the turnout was around 55%. A total of 28 candidates, including 10 each from Shiv Sena (UBT)'s youth wing Yuva Sena and BJP-allied Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) were in the fray.
The elections, which were conducted after a two-year delay, concluded without any hiccups, except for an allegation of a 'fake' polling agent appointed by Shiv Sena UBT at a centre in Vashi. ABVP activists alleged that a person designated as the polling agent for one of the Sena candidates wasn't registered as a voter himself. After the activists raised a stink, the agent ran away from the polling station, ABVP claimed in a post on X.
While the polls were originally scheduled for Sunday, the MU on Friday evening announced indefinitely suspending the elections. The decision followed a directive from the state government, which appointed a one-member committee to probe 'extremely low' enrollment for the voter list. However, following an urgent hearing on Saturday of a plea filed by three Yuva Sena candidates for the polls, HC asked the polls to be held immediately.
This was the second instance of the polls being deferred at the state's behest - MU had suspended the polls around a year ago as well after the government asked the university to probe allegations of duplicated entries in the electoral rolls.
Ingle had also filed a plea in HC challenging the elections because the university 'illegally' charged a Rs20 registration fees from the voters. He also questioned the reduction in the number of electors from more than 90,000 to around 13,0000.
