Having taught at the University of Delhi for nearly a decade, I have witnessed the annual Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) elections from close quarters. Every year, as the election season approaches, campuses suddenly acquire a different energy. Students discuss candidates, organisations, issues and alliances; volunteers move from classroom to classroom; candidates introduce themselves to students whom they might otherwise never have met; and, for a few days, the university becomes an unusually vibrant political space.There is much about this that deserves to be celebrated.
Universities should not produce merely degree-holders. They should produce citizens capable of thinking, questioning, disagreeing, organising and participating in public life. Student unions can provide an institutional platform through which concerns regarding academic facilities, examinations, hostels, transportation, safety, accessibility, infrastructure and numerous other aspects of university life can reach the administration. Elections provide legitimacy to those who claim to speak on behalf of students.
More importantly, for thousands of young men and women, a university election may be their first direct encounter with democracy beyond simply casting a vote in a national or state election. Here they observe candidates, listen to arguments, question representatives, campaign for causes and sometimes contest elections themselves. They learn that leadership requires persuasion and that public office ultimately depends upon the consent of those one seeks to represent. In this sense, student politics can become a nursery of democratic leadership.
Many individuals who enter public life receive their earliest lessons in organisation, public speaking, negotiation and political mobilisation during their university years. There is nothing inherently objectionable about this. Indeed, a healthy democracy requires successive generations of politically conscious young citizens. The question, therefore, is not whether universities should have student elections. I believe they should. The more troubling question is: What kind of politics are we teaching through these elections?
When the Democratic Classroom Teaches the Wrong Lessons
If university elections are a student's first practical encounter with democracy, the methods through which these elections are fought become extraordinarily important. When young people discover that an election requires enormous expenditure, fleets of vehicles, extravagant displays of strength, thousands of printed materials, intimidation, defacement of public property, or the mobilisation of resources inaccessible to an ordinary student, we must ask ourselves what lesson they are taking from democracy. Are we teaching them that an election is a contest of ideas—or a demonstration of financial capacity? Are we teaching them that leadership means persuading fellow students—or displaying power? Are we teaching them that public property belongs to everybody—or that an election campaign gives one temporary licence to damage it? These questions go far beyond DUSU.
As a society, we frequently lament the influence of money and muscle in electoral politics. We speak of electoral reform, transparency, accountability and cleaner politics. Yet, if some of the very practices we criticise in national politics are reproduced in student elections, we risk normalising them at precisely the stage when young citizens are developing their understanding of political life. One cannot expect cleaner politics tomorrow while quietly accepting its opposite in the political education of today.
The Lyngdoh Committee: A Reform Agenda We Already Possess
These concerns are hardly new. Following directions of the Supreme Court, the Government of India constituted a committee under former Chief Election Commissioner J. M. Lyngdoh in 2006 to examine student union elections. Its recommendations subsequently acquired considerable importance in regulating university elections. The underlying philosophy of the recommendations remains remarkably relevant: student elections should remain democratic while also remaining genuinely student elections.
Among other safeguards, the framework places a ceiling of ₹5,000 on a candidate's election expenditure, requires submission of election accounts, places restrictions on printed campaign material and the use of vehicles, and lays down academic and attendance requirements for candidates. Delhi University's own election framework continues to incorporate these principles.
The Supreme Court has described the Lyngdoh Committee recommendations as “very salutary in nature” and reiterated that student elections should broadly be conducted in accordance with them.
The importance of the ₹5,000 expenditure ceiling lies not merely in the amount involved. Its underlying democratic principle is far more important: economic resources should not determine access to student leadership.
A university student from an ordinary family should be able to contest an election against a student from an affluent background without believing that the contest has already been decided by their respective financial capacities.
That is democratic equality in its most elementary form.
The Problem of Enforcement
Unfortunately, the existence of rules does not automatically create a democratic political culture.
The events surrounding DUSU elections in recent years have repeatedly brought this gap between rules and practice before the courts. During the 2024 elections, the Delhi High Court intervened over widespread allegations of defacement of public property. Counting of votes was delayed, and the Court subsequently required remedial action before permitting the process to proceed.
The issue has resurfaced dramatically during the 2026 DUSU elections. On September 18, the Delhi High Court expressed concern over reported violations involving vehicle cavalcades, weapons and other misconduct. The Court issued notices to 140 candidates, prohibited victory processions following the results and called upon the authorities to take action against violations. Delhi Police informed the Court that 49 vehicles had been impounded, more than 5,400 challans issued and four persons arrested in connection with election-related violations.
These developments should concern everyone associated with higher education, irrespective of which student organisation one supports.
The issue is not about one candidate, organisation or ideological persuasion. It is about the political culture our universities collectively permit.
Make Issues, Not Spectacle, the Centre of Elections
DUSU elections can become considerably more meaningful if we shift their centre of gravity from spectacle to debate.
Imagine an election in which candidates are primarily known for their positions on student issues: quality of teaching and learning, libraries, affordable accommodation, women's safety, accessibility for students with disabilities, mental well-being, sports facilities, public transportation, scholarships, examination reforms, digital infrastructure and opportunities for research and employment.
Why should the strength of a candidate be measured by the number of vehicles accompanying a procession? Why not by the strength of the manifesto?
Why should walls speak through posters when candidates themselves can speak through structured debates?
Delhi University possesses the intellectual resources to develop a much richer electoral culture. Colleges and departments could facilitate moderated candidate interactions. Manifestos could be placed on common digital platforms. Expenditure statements could be publicly accessible. Candidates could participate in issue-based debates. Students could question them directly about their promises.
Technology makes inexpensive campaigning easier today than it was when the Lyngdoh Committee submitted its report two decades ago. Social media, university portals, common digital noticeboards and officially organised debates can dramatically reduce the perceived need for expensive physical campaigning.
At the same time, enforcement must become credible. Rules that exist only on paper eventually undermine respect for rules themselves. Election authorities, university administrations, colleges, student organisations and candidates all have responsibilities. Violations should attract consequences that are predictable, timely and impartial.
Political Parties and Student Organisations Also Have a Responsibility
Student organisations, including those associated with larger ideological or political traditions, have contributed to political debate and mobilisation on Indian campuses for decades. The Delhi High Court recently reiterated that political parties themselves should not interfere in DUSU elections, while distinguishing such interference from a student's membership of a student organisation associated with a political tradition.
The larger responsibility, however, is cultural rather than merely legal.
Senior political organisations should resist the temptation to treat university elections as miniature versions of national electoral contests. Students require space to develop leadership organically. The purpose should be to identify articulate, socially sensitive and intellectually grounded young leaders—not merely those who can command the greatest resources or mobilise the largest spectacle.
Democracy Must Begin with Democratic Values
There is a larger paradox here.
We want our national politics to become cleaner, less dependent upon money and muscle, more transparent and more responsive to ordinary citizens. But such a political culture cannot suddenly emerge when a person reaches Parliament or a Legislative Assembly. Political habits are cultivated much earlier.
A university election is therefore not an insignificant annual campus event. It is an exercise in democratic socialisation.
The young student contesting an election today may become a legislator, minister, civil-society leader, academic, journalist, administrator or simply an engaged citizen tomorrow. The habits that we encourage at eighteen or twenty can shape attitudes towards public life for decades.
That is why I would never argue for the abolition of student elections merely because excesses occur during them. Doing so would amount to treating the symptom by eliminating an important democratic institution.
The answer to bad electoral practices is better electoral practices, not less democracy.
Let our students contest elections. Let them campaign passionately. Let them disagree. Let ideological traditions compete. Let them organise, debate and mobilise. Let them experience both victory and defeat.
But let them also learn that democracy has rules; that public property deserves respect; that political opponents are not enemies; that leadership does not require intimidation; and, above all, that an ordinary student without money or muscle possesses exactly the same democratic right to seek representation as someone backed by formidable resources.
If universities are indeed nurseries of democracy, the responsibility before us is greater than conducting elections successfully.
We must ensure that the democracy our students first encounter is the democracy we would eventually like India to become.
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