Just one day before the end of campaigning for the Jagannath University Central Students’ Union (JnUCSU) election, allegations have surfaced that 40,000 leaflets of the leftist “Maulana Bhasani Brigade” panel were stolen.

The panel leaders made the allegation at a press conference held at 3:30 pm on Friday (26 December).

Amrin Jahan Opi, the panel’s candidate for Social Welfare and Student Affairs Secretary, said, “Yesterday at noon, 40,000 campaign leaflets of our 21 candidates went missing. At that time, we did not receive any satisfactory response from the university administration. Later, we came to know that the leaflets were taken away by cleaning staff in the name of cleaning.”

GS candidate Ivan Tahseeb said, “Yesterday, our 40,000 leaflets were stolen from in front of the staircase of the Abakash Building. Although we managed to recover a portion of them, the campaign materials of several candidates are still missing. We demand compensation for this incident and call for punishment of those involved, following a proper investigation.”

VP candidate Gourab Bhowmik said, “The cleaning staff who took our leaflets are claiming that since the campaign period was over, they sold them. However, we have seen that no leaflets of any other panel were stolen. We demand the administration to take appropriate action.”

Demand for Manual Voting:

At the press conference, the Maulana Bhasani Brigade also demanded that voting be conducted through a manual system.

In this regard, the panel’s AGS candidate Shamsul Alam Maruf said, “In previous student union elections, we have seen allegations of election manufacturing. Moreover, the Election Commission has failed to provide any clear explanation on how the machine would read ballots if voters mark the cross symbol more than once. Therefore, we demand that voting be held through a manual system.”