Kolkata, July 17: A division bench of the Calcutta High Court, on Thursday, directed the West Bengal government to ensure the fast completion of pending students’ council elections in all colleges and universities in the state as early as possible by issuing the notification for such elections at the earliest.

The division bench of Justice Soumen Sen and Justice Smita Das directed the state government to inform the court about what the latter was thinking of issuing the election notification within the next two days, when the matter will come up for hearing again.

As the state government counsel informed the court that the students’ council elections could not be conducted in some universities because of the absence of full-time vice-chancellors there, the division bench observed that elections should be conducted at least in those universities where there are full-time vice-chancellors.

The division bench also observed that the state government should first issue the notification for conducting students’ council elections, and thereafter, the court would decide on what to do next.

On Thursday, the division bench also observed that the educational institutions in the state should be free of political influence, and hence, for that, only educationists and not political personalities should be there in the governing bodies of such institutions.

To recall, earlier this month, the same division bench directed the West Bengal higher education departments to ensure that the union rooms, also often referred to as common rooms, in all colleges and universities in the state remain locked till the time the students’ union elections in those institutes were conducted and the results were declared.

That direction from the Calcutta High Court was quite significant considering that the union room or common room at South Calcutta Law College (New Campus) at Kasba in South Kolkata became significant in the case of the rape of a student of that college within the college campus last month.

The investigation has revealed that the victim was called by the three accused, Monojit Mishra, Jaib Ahmed, and Pramit Mukhopadhyay to the common room within the campus. After some initial conversations within the common room, the victim was dragged from there to the adjacent guard room, also within the campus by the three accused persons and there she was raped. (IANS)

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