Saffron & Independents Win Panjab University Polls

September

2026

The Panjab University Campus Students Council (PUCSC) elections were held on 31 Aug. Around 16,500 voters were eligible to vote for the new PUCSC. Women voters were the majority of the electorate with 9K votes, men voters were 7,467, and there was one transgender voter. The four-way presidential contest was between Gurman Singh Sidhu of the Indian National Congress’ student wing National Students' Union of India (NSUI); Aadil Brar of the Aam Aadmi Party’s Association of Students for Alternative Politics (ASAP); Ankit Bidhan of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-backed Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP); and Darshpreet Singh of Sath. Shiromani Akali Dal's (SAD) student wing, Students of India’s (SOI) candidate Pranav's nomination was canceled due to an attendance shortage. On 30 Aug, SOI declared unconditional support to ABVP. SOI’s move further fuelled the rumors about an SAD and BJP alliance in Panjab for the 2027 elections. Ankit from ABVP won the presidential election, while Armaan Singh Bhinder—from an independent union Panjab University Democratic Front, not affiliated to any political party won as Vice President. Dhyan Singh and Vishal Bamal, both independent candidates, won as General Secretary and Joint Secretary. In 2025, under Section 72 of the Punjab Reorganisation Act, 1966 the union government had notified the restructuring of PU's two principal governing bodies—Senate and Syndicate. The notification said appointments would no longer be through elections but through nominations. Larger questions on who has a right to Chandigarh, who funds PU, and should PU remain a state university or be taken over by the union government had arisen. The students protested for weeks. Finally, the union government withdrew its notification. Though even in 2025, the PUCSC president Gauravveer Sohal was from ABVP, the vice president Ashmeet Singh from the Sikh identity-driven Sath, along with Left-oriented unions like Punjab Students Union (Lalkar), led the protest. The new union does not offer such possibilities to resist the union government takeover or saffronization of the university but we need to wait and watch. Concurrently, yielding to students’ 19-day-long agitation, Punjabi University, Patiala has announced a complete rollback of the fee hike for the 2026–27 academic session. Students alleged that tuition fees in some courses had increased by as much as 657%, while hostel fees had gone up by around 30% to 42% (earlier coverage).