For the first time, the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) national body is supervising the election to NSUI Nagaland unit to ensure free and fair conduct of election which is scheduled for next week.
Following completion of membership drive carried out earlier, the process of election of new office bearers to NSUI Nagaland unit, both at the district and state level has started with the filing of nomination and scrutiny of nomination papers which completed on Thursday.
Altogether, 18 nomination papers had been received from across the state and were scrutinized Thursday and found all valid.
The first election to the district level would be conducted followed by the state level.
To conduct the state level election, Chief Election Commissioner NSUI, Anish Shetty would be arriving the state on December 18.
Pradesh Returning Officer (PRO) in charge of NSUI Nagaland state election Subroto Borah from Assam who is at Kohima monitoring the election process along with three other observers from Assam and West Bengal said this while talking to media persons at NSUI office at the Congress Bhavan on Thursday.
PRO expressed hope that the entire electioneering process would be completed within next week and that the new team of office bearers will take over before the end of the year, if not before Christmas.
The motive of conducting election is to give free and fair election whereby students from different sections of the society can come up and raise issues both in the state and national and given equal opportunities, Borah said.
In the present format, NSUI gives equal opportunity to every section of the society and they can represent not only political parties but the society as well, Borah said and urged different political parties and leaders to identify the potential upcoming students for the candidature.
“We require the support and cooperation from the PCCI and former NSUI leaders who can guide the upcoming leaders for raising issues related to problems of the students and other social issues”, he added.
While claiming that NSUI is purely a student body, he said people often have a wrong notion about NSUI as an organization backed by political party.
Borah revealed that the mode of conduct of election to the ten-member committee for both the state and district level would be purely on merit basis and there will be no loser as the candidate who scores the highest vote would be the president, the second vice president, the next four as general secretaries (general) and another two each reserved for boys and girls (one each for general and SC/ST reservation) and another four posts of national delegates to represent the state at the national level for two years.
The main criteria for a candidate is that he should be a college student above 27 years of age without any criminal record.
Reacting to a query on the performances of NSUI Nagaland in the past, Borah admitted that NSUI in the state faced problems in the past but they did well by raising many issues successfully.
“Step by step, NSUI in Nagaland is coming up”, he said and expressed hope that the new team would continue to work harder.
On membership drive, he revealed that the state NSUI had some one thousand members now, which he admitted was not up to the expectation but termed it as a good start.
He further said NSUI central organization had carried out the first phase nationwide (state and district level) election except Nagaland, Manipur and Jammu & Kashmir last year and this was the second phase nationwide, and the first for Nagaland.