DUSU Elections : Supreme Court Refuses To Entertain Candidate's Plea To Provisionally Contest For Secretary Post

The Supreme Court today refused to entertain a plea filed by Delhi University-student Rahul Jhansla seeking permission to contest for the post of Secretary in the Delhi University Students Union elections scheduled for September 27, 2024.

A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna, Sanjay Kumar and R Mahadevan heard the matter and observed that it could neither stay the elections, nor permit Jhansla to contest provisionally. Ultimately, the plea was dismissed as withdrawn.

The bench noted that Jhansla's nomination was cancelled as he filed the same for multiple posts. Further, the Delhi High Court had issued notice on his plea raising the same issue, however, as it denied interim relief, Jhansla straightaway came to the Supreme Court assailing the order of the Single Judge, without moving the Division Bench.

When the matter was heard in the morning, Justice Khanna enquired from Jhansla's counsel if the issue was considered yesterday by the High Court. Denying the same, the counsel said, "it is totally different from that".

However, Justice Kumar, referring to a news report, pointed out that the University is to take a call today on whether the elections should be re-scheduled and nominations called afresh. "How can you say it does not have an impact on this?" the judge asked.

"Why did you not go to the Division bench? Because you're there at the Supreme Court, so you directly come there. Please move the Division Bench. As far as law of elections are concerned, they are never stayed. We can't accept nomination or anything", added Justice Khanna.

When the counsel pressed that Jhansla be allowed to contest provisionally, Justice Khanna said, "that can't be permitted at this stage...We don't interfere with elections at this stage. That's the law".

Be that as it may, the matter was passed over to enable Senior Advocate Puneet Jain to address the Court. In the post-lunch session, the senior counsel appeared and argued the case. However, the bench was not convinced.

"We don't know what you did or didn't do...there is no question of staying the elections or permitting you to participate. That will only be post-election now. You are too ambitious on this. There is no glaring error", said Justice Khanna.

Supplementing, Justice Kumar underlined that the Delhi High Court's impugned order also states that the elections to the post of Secretary would be subject to the final outcome of Jhansla's petition.

To put briefly, Jhansla, a student of MA in the Department of Buddhist Studies at DU, filed the present petition seeking permission to be allowed to provisionally contest in the upcoming DUSU elections.

As per his claims, his nomination was cleared, having all the requisite eligibility to contest for the post of Secretary, and a provisional list of eligible candidates was published (which included his name). He appeared before the concerned authorities to withdraw nomination for posts other than Secretary. However, they dismissed his nomination for not filing the withdrawal in time and didn't include his name in the final list for the post of Secretary.

Aggrieved, he approached the Delhi High Court. Although a Single Judge bench issued notice on his petition, it did not grant interim relief so as to enable him to provisionally contest in the elections. As such, he approached the Supreme Court.

Counsels for petitioner-Rahul Jhansla: Senior Advocate Puneet Jain; Advocates Tanmay Yadav, Rohit Yadav, Aaditya Yadav, Poornima Singh, Kartik Yadav, Neeraj, Deepak Swami and Akshat Maheshwari

Case Title: Rahul Jhansla v. Delhi University & Ors., SLP(C) No. 22598/2024