Kathmandu, April 11

The much awaited Free Students Union (FSU) poll that has not been held since seven years and it is unlikely to be held this time too.

Tribhuvan University had earlier formed a three-member committee under the coordination of Rector Prof Sudha Tripathy to hold talks with student unions regarding conducting the FSU poll.

The committee discussed with all student unions separately and jointly, but the student unions have differences on various issues. This will surely either delay the poll or disrupt it.

TU was internally preparing to conduct FSU poll by the first week of May, but if the dispute among student unions widens, TU will fail to meet the expected deadline.

At present, two student unions aligned to Nepali Congress and UCPN-Maoist have opposite views regarding age bar for candidates in the poll.

NC-aligned Nepal Students’ Union (NSU) is lobbying not to apply age bar that limits the age of contenders to 28 years, while the UCPN-Maoist aligned All Nepal National Independent Students Union-Revolutionary (ANNISU-R) is stubborn on following the age bar from this time.

However, CPN-UML aligned All Nepal National Free Student Union (ANNFSU) wants to conduct FSU poll at the earliest with flexibility on the age bar provision.

Last week, chairpersons of NSU unit in more than 50 colleges in Kathmandu had submitted a memorandum to TU Vice-chancellor Prof Tirthya Raj Khaniya demanding FSU poll without age bar.

Similarly, ANNISU-R also announced formation of various committees to prepare for the FSU poll.

Prof Tripathy said that TU was not able to fix the date for the FSU poll due to differences between student unions on age bar.

She said, “The TU senate meeting scheduled for April 21 is going to take a decision on age bar for poll contenders.”

She stated that three TU officials could not sort out this issue therefore the Senate meeting with participation of the three student unions  NSU, ANNFSU and ANNISU-R  will give a way out on the age bar issue.

TU Regulation has stated that if the FSU poll is conducted before mid-April 2016, there will be no age bar for contenders for one time and after this deadline, contenders above 28 years will not be eligible to stand for election.

Interestingly, the same student unions did not let TU conduct the poll in the past due to dispute over various issues.