The Jahangirnagar University Central Students’ Union (Jucsu) election will be held on Thursday, after a long gap of 33 years.
A total of 177 candidates are contesting for 25 posts in the central union, while another 445 candidates are competing in the hall unions.
Ballot papers for Jucsu have been printed in three pages, while two halls have two-page ballots, and the rest have single-page ballots.
Election Commission member Professor Mafruhi Sattar said that if a voter makes a mistake while casting a ballot, they may request a replacement from officials. To accommodate this, some extra ballots have been printed.
As ballots are produced in sets of 100, additional copies were arranged. However, each polling center will only receive ballots according to its voter count, with any further needs subject to commission approval. Depending on the number of candidates, ballots have been printed in three-page, two-page, and one-page formats, he added.
Chief Election Commissioner Professor Moniruzzaman said the ballots will follow the OMR system, allowing visually impaired voters to cast their votes with assistance from election officials.
Security measures
Voting will be conducted using the OMR ballot system across 21 centers, with a total of 224 booths.
A total of 21 returning officers, 67 polling officers, and 67 assistant polling officers will be on duty.
Ansar members will manage the polling centers, while 1,200 police officers will be deployed at campus gates and key points—most positioned outside the campus.
About 80 CCTV cameras have been installed to monitor election security, supervised by the Election Commission. Senior faculty members, the proctorial body, and campus security officials will also be on duty, alongside two executive magistrates.
Earlier on Tuesday, mandatory dope tests were carried out at the university’s medical center for both central and hall candidates between 9am and 7:30pm.
Samples were submitted by 163 central candidates and 403 hall candidates, while 56 candidates failed to comply with the requirement.
Two candidates drop out
For the central union, nine candidates contested the vice president (VP) post and eight the general secretary (GS) post. However, independent candidate Syeda Ananna Faria withdrew from the GS race at the last moment. Meanwhile, although the High Court had reinstated his candidacy, the Chamber Court later suspended the order, barring Amartya Roy, the VP candidate from the Shompritir Oikya panel, from participating.
This year, there are 11,919 registered voters, with women making up 48.8 percent. Official campaigning ended at midnight on Wednesday, following a final day of last-minute outreach across the campus by candidates and their panels.
Two halls to skip union polls
In the hall union elections, all candidates of Begum Sufia Kamal Hall and Nawab Faizunnesa Hall have been elected unopposed.
Therefore, only the central union election will take place in these two halls.
In Sufia Kamal Hall, 10 out of 15 posts were uncontested while five remain vacant.
In Faizunnesa Hall, six out of 15 posts were uncontested, leaving nine vacant.