DOT Desk: Leftist students demand polling stations outside dorms
Left student organizations Bangladesh Chhatra Union and Bangladesh Chhatra Federation in separate programmes on Monday demanded setting up of polling booths outside the dormitories during Dhaka University Central Students Union elections, reports The Daily Observer BD. In a press conference, held at Modhu’s canteen of Dhaka University, Jahid Sujon, central general secretary of Chhatra Federation said ‘Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL) men control the dormitories’ for years.
Resident students are forced to join Chhatra League programmes and attend programmes conducted by BCL activists at the halls terming it ‘guest room’ which also could influence resident students, he alleged. He also demanded that polling booths should be set up at academic building so that the university administration and other election watch-dogs could keep the polling stations under monitoring.
Jahid Sujon also said that they already launched mass signature collection campaign to drum up support for their demand to setting up polling stations outside dorms.
Organisations central president Golam Mustafa, Dhaka University chapter president Umme Habiba Benazir, general secretary Ashraful Huq Istiak, oraganizing secretary Nasir Abdullah also attended the press conference, among others.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh Chhatra Union in a rally at the altar of Aparajeyo Bangla of the university also demanded to set up polling stations outside the dorms so that the general students could cast their vote without any fear.
Union’s central president GM Zilani Shuvo said that the DUCSU polls did not take place in 28 years because of indifference among the successive university administrations and governments in order to maintain their dominance on the campus which turned the university a ‘field of terror’.
He also warned that the general students would not allow any farce in the name of election.
Expressing solidarity, Nurul Huq Nur, joint convener of Bangladesh Students Right protection Council, platform which cradled recent quota reform movement, said that everyone knows how ruling party’s student wing uses dormitories as political tools so that polling stations should be established outside the halls.