More than 43 hours have passed since voting ended in the Jahangirnagar University Central Students’ Union (JUCSU) election, yet the results are still pending.
The university’s Election Commission has now expressed hope that the final results will be announced by Saturday evening.
Chief Election Commissioner Prof Md Moniruzzaman told reporters at 12pm on Saturday that around 85 per cent of the ballots had been counted so far. “We hope to announce the results by 7pm,” he said.
Earlier in the day, around 11am, Election Commission member Prof Lutfur Elahi stated that results from 15 out of 21 residence halls had been finalised, and they were aiming to publish the full results by around 1:30 or 2pm.
On Friday evening, Moniruzzaman had said, “We hope to complete the counting and announce the results by tonight. However, we can’t specify an exact time yet.”
The JUCSU voting began at 9am on Thursday across 21 halls on the campus, which has 11,897 registered voters. Most halls wrapped up voting by 5pm, but due to long queues in some, the process extended till 7:30pm.
Vote counting began under tight security at the Senate Building after 10pm on Thursday. The Election Commission reported that voter turnout stood at approximately 68 per cent.
The major delay stemmed from a last-minute change in the counting method. Initially, ballots were to be processed using OMR machines, but allegations surfaced regarding the procurement of those machines and ballot papers from a company linked to the Jamaat-e-Islami political party. In response, the Election Commission switched to manual counting, causing significant delays.
On Friday afternoon, a returning officer explained the scale of the task: with nearly 8,000 students casting three votes each for the central union, the commission had to manually count around 24,000 ballots.
Vote counting for hall-level unions concluded by Friday evening, after which the central JUCSU counting began around 8pm. Despite more than 16 hours passing since then, the full tally remains incomplete.
The prolonged delay has sparked frustration and criticism among students, raising concerns over the management and transparency of the long-awaited JUCSU polls.
