PU student council poll: Free food, liquor for voters’ ‘khatirdari’ on varsity campus

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 2

Attempts to woo students through freebies has started on the Panjab University campus. Since the City Beautiful is famous for its affordable liquor, hostellers are being offered premium whiskey brands by certain groups.

Since the stakes are high for some parties this time, the ‘rate’ for a single vote has also shot up. To make things easy and feasible for everyone, ‘accounts’ have been opened up at shops of Student Centre as well as the Sector 14 market by parties. The students sporting party stickers are asked to reach a particular shop where they have to tell a ‘code’, normally in four digits, after which they are served food by the shopkeeper free of cost. To prevent ‘over-exploitation’, the parties keep changing the code after a few hours every day.

An organisation, which is associated with a mainstream political party, has been treating the students at an eatery on the campus for the past four days and has reportedly spent over 1.5 lakh on this ‘service’. However, there are also parties, which haven’t been able to please voters in such fashion due to budgetary constraints. “We had opened an account at one of the shops at Student Centre, but money we paid upfront exhausted in just two days. We cannot afford more,” said a campus student leader.

Ensuring proper ‘khatirdari’ of students, many leaders have been supplying voters with premium brands of whiskey priced over Rs 1,000. However, procuring one is not that easy. “One needs to commit that his vote will go in favour of that party. Then, the representative has a word with some leader, who gives the go-ahead,” said a resident of a boys’ hostel. Cash is also being used by student leaders to woo voters during campaign trails in hostels. “I was offered Rs 3,000 in exchange of my word that I would vote for them,” said another campus student. Despite claims of a strict vigil by the university authorities, such things are happening in a clandestine manner and are likely to increase in the coming days.