A year after NONE won the Elections at BITS-Pilani: Part of Chronicles of my freshman year at BITS

BITSians are the elite few who get the option to vote for ‘None’ in the elections. And, right in my freshman year ‘None’ got crowned the President of the BITS Students’ Union.

The Students’ Union (SU) election was laced up with every type political excitement possible albeit in a controlled environment. The hum of elections started even before the nominations were filed. Friends of a particular candidate for the post of SU President (Prez) very sweetly offered us (us being me and my freshmen friends) advice and help regarding college matters. They obviously didn’t forget to mention the academic laurels achieved by their friend at the end of their pep talk. We were reminded to keep mum about the friendly advice as campaigning was not allowed till then. This was my first interaction with college politics. The election for the SU Prez took many interesting twists and turns thereafter.

After the nominations were finalized, the fight became more bitter. There were just two candidates running for the post of Prez. With each passing day supporters of each candidate pulled out a new trick to woo the electorate.

Then came the legendary Audi Debate, better known as Audi Ragging. Hey, I always wanted to shout out slogans for the candidate I supported but the EC had issued a strict warning against any such chanting. Since, I did not wish to be thrown out I satisfied myself with clapping extra loud for him. Eventually, towards the end people did break out with loud cheers. Though to my joy, I did see a clear winner emerge in this verbal battle.

Regionalism obviously doesn’t appeal to the well informed mass here, but as indigenous as BITSian can get they devised a new way to play this card. Someone accused a candidate of wooing voters on the ground of regionalism. Ah! We all thought how cheap! Here is someone asking for my vote since I belong to his state, how wicked. More accusations flowed in. Then poof came the Election Commission (EC) with its cane. Out came a verdict with warnings of heavy retributions in case it was disobeyed. The EC had put up a blanket ban on the campaigns of a candidate.

Hah! We got a sigh of relief. No more campaigns for the weekend. Not that we were troubled, in anyway. The rules of EC are very strict here. A toe out of line here or there and EC makes you invisible from the whole scene.

One evening we heard strange rumours about EC banning a candidate from contesting the election. Well, we didn’t believe in them. Out of two candidates if you throw out one, then there is no competition. Next day there were notices all over the campus stating that the rumours were indeed true. Ah! This hurt, when in reality no one I knew had ever found any of the accusations to be true.

Then was the night of uncertainty. A motion to dissolve the entire EC was moved in front of the present Union Council. It failed, as it required a support of four-fifths of the Council for such a motion to pass. Though, members of the GBM did sign a referendum for the cause. It would have easily amassed the required two-third votes overnight. This, seeing the enthusiasm of the GBM which clearly didn’t see merit in the actions of the EC. Eventually, the referendum was useless as the motion had already failed before the Union Council. I vaguely remember that the motion had got 8 of the required 10 votes in favour; 4 votes were against it in the present Union Council of 12 members.

So, under these circumstances we cast our votes. But, then God always has his will. There were two options in the electronic ballot. One with the name of the remaining candidate, and the other saying ‘None’. But, no one really believed that ‘None’ could win, after all why will someone sweat outside the polling booth to just to say that he/she wanted a headless Union Council.

But then, I saw people standing in queues for over an hour just to cast a vote for ‘None’. There was someone who had misplaced his I.D. card and had come with the registration slip to cast his vote. There were SMSes floating around, warning dire consequences of a re-election if ‘None’ did win. But, who cared the GBM had got an opportunity to vent out its emotions and out it poured.

At the night when the results were announced, no one could actually believe it. ‘None’ had actually won. Hundreds of people broke out in a joyous march, singing ‘Singh is King’. Incidentally, ‘Singh is King’ is the first movie of BITSian life for my wing.

I don’t know what it was. Whether, people saw the EC as tyrannical or it was a sympathy wave or people got trigger happy with an option or it was just the true support for someone. But, what I saw was that people had clearly exercised their option to choose.

Standing here, a year after what I feel is that, it was not a simple victory for ‘None’. It was a loss for BITS. There had been two exemplary candidates with great visions and neither had won. Who knows who could have won between the two, had both contested? It was a close call any day.