‘Who gets to vote?’: Inside the Institute Secretary Elections 2024

The recent Institute Cultural/Sports Secretary Elections have called attention to some discernible ambiguities in the electoral process, especially regarding the formation of closed electorates.

This article highlights the existing rules for the same, the complications it led to, and the timeline of events that culminated in the re-elections held on 21 April 2024 for the posts of Institute Basketball Secretary and Institute Music Secretary.

Introduction:

The SAC constitution permits any eligible student to apply for a Position of Responsibility (PoR) in the institute. For elected PORs, candidates engage in groundworks and create manifestos. This is followed by a Black Box, a closed-door session conducted post-manifesto submission deadlines, where manifesto points are scrutinized for feasibility. Finally, the Soapbox serves as a platform where candidates share their plans for the upcoming tenure, defend their ideas, and take feedback from the soapbox attendees before the day of voting. The Election Commission (EC) oversees all election proceedings, including decision-making, conducting elections, and result declaration. 

The procedure for the election of the Institute Secretaries 2024-25 started with filing nominations on 27-28 January 2024. This was followed by voting on 10 March 2024. Unlike Institute General Secretary elections, which allow all bonafide students of the institute to vote, Institute Cultural/Sports Secretary elections involve a closed-electorate-based model. Sections IV and V of the SAC constitution outline: 

The Cultural and Sports Secretaries will be elected in the Institute Elections, but the electorate for each of them will comprise the following members:

1. Institute General Secretaries – 1 vote each

2. Outgoing Institute Cultural/Sports Council – 1 vote each

3. Hostel General Secretaries – 1 vote each

4. Cultural/Sports Councillors of Hostels – 1 vote each

5. Maximum of 5 Nominees from each hostel – 1 vote each

Ideally, the nominated students should be actively involved in the respective club or community. This ensures they have the necessary context about the candidates as well as the needs of the aforementioned community and can make well-informed decisions when voting.

Culturals Electorate Complications:

The General Secretary Cultural Affairs (GSCA) mailed empty spreadsheets to the Hostel General Secretaries to procure electorate lists a day before Silent Day, i.e., on 8 March 2024. The Hostel General Secretaries were asked to fill and submit it by the end of the same day. We were informed that the spreadsheets used to be shared much earlier than the announced deadline in previous years compared to the one-day notice this time around. 

As per our understanding, sharing it on the same day as the deadline can make it quite difficult for the Hostel Council to coordinate and find names of people who have been active participants in the activities of any Culturals club or genre. This can lead to unsatisfactory and uninformed electorate list submissions.

In many cases, alterations were made to the electorates submitted by the Hostel Cultural Councillors for Institute Secretary elections. One of the Cultural Councillors claimed they had submitted the list three hours after the submission deadline since the GSCA had informed them that they would accept late submissions. However, according to them, the Institute Cultural Council (ICC) had already submitted a different electorate. No updates were made to this final list in accordance with the list submitted by the Cultural Councillor. In the cases where the electorate lists were submitted before the deadline, modifications were still reported.

We found instances of electorates where the students were completely unrelated to the Culturals genre (we verified these names with a few members of the ex-council to find out if those students had been involved with the genre in any way). Almost the same set of people were added to electorates across several clubs – this was done in hostels 1, 11, 16, 17, and 18. For instance, in Hostel 11, the same three names appeared in the electorate list for various Institute Cultural Secretary elections.
After the elections were over, a Cultural Committee meeting was held (this consisted of the GSCA, ICC secretaries, ICC nominees, and all Hostel Cultural Councillors). In this meeting, issues were raised by various Hostel Councillors. The Councillors of Hostels 3, 5, and 6 complained that some of the names put in the electorate were unrelated to Culturals. To this, the GSCA apologized and accepted that it was an error on his part and that some names were added by him at the last moment. The reasons given by the GSCA were that he didn’t get electorate lists on time and didn’t feel that the lists provided by Cultural Councillors were satisfactory. He mentioned that he had asked the Dean SA for re-election. The Dean SA informed us that this matter was then tabled for discussion since the decision to hold re-election takes time and is in the purview of the EC, following which a sub-committee within the EC decided to have re-election for certain Institute Secretary posts.

Sports Electorate Complications:

The spreadsheets to procure electorate lists were shared on 8 March 2024. The Hostel General Secretaries were asked to update the names they wanted to nominate for the respective electorates in the sheet by the end of the same day. On the voting day, several individuals involved with the respective sports who were expected to receive a spot in the electorate expressed concerns over not being included in the final electorate list, leading to discontent within the community. The electorate list for at least some Institute Sports Secretaries, such as the basketball electorate list shared on the unofficial basketball group, sparked suspicions of alterations favouring certain candidates.

In the case of H15, the Sports Councillor herself was excluded from the list of voters. Additionally, in each sports category, the same five individuals consistently participated in voting despite not being active members of every community. 

Re-elections:

Following the election results, some of the candidates who lost the elections for the Institute Secretary positions approached the Dean SA, requesting re-election. Following this, a sub-committee of the EC comprising the two Returning Officers, who oversaw Gymkhana Elections 2024 was constituted to form new closed electorates for the re-elections. The committee sent an email to the respective General Secretary (Cultural Affairs/Sports Affairs), Hostel General Secretaries, and the candidates on 17 April 2024. The email detailed the ongoing process of forming a new electorate list for the Institute Music Secretary and Institute Basketball Secretary positions. Hostels were requested to provide electorate lists by 19 April 2024, with re-elections scheduled for Sunday, 21 April 2024. The email also mandated that information be filled in an ‘Eligibility Remarks’ column for each submitted name.

Unlike the original election in March where the electorate list hadn’t been made available to the candidates, a provisional electorate using the responses from various hostels was made available a day before the voting day on 20 April 2024 by the committee. The email that included the provisional list asked the recipients to let the committee know about any concerns or queries regarding the nominated names in the list before 9 PM of the same day. After this, the final electorate list was made available on the morning of 21 April 2024.

However, we cannot clearly comment on how just and unbiased the electorates of the re-elections were either. For instance, the electorate list for the position of Institute Music Secretary submitted by Hostel 15 and 6 included names of Hostel Council members unrelated to the genre while skipping names of hostel residents who were more closely associated with the genre and were a part of the Inter-IIT music contingent and/or the hostel GCs. 

Thus, even though Hostel Councils had more time to submit an electorate list for the re-election process compared to the original election held in March, it seems like some of them still overlooked some names that could have been more suited to be a part of the electorate compared to the names they actually ended up submitting.

Conclusion:

The 2024 Institute Secretary elections, for at least some genres in the Sports and Cultural Councils, were marred by controversy owing to complications surrounding the formation of electorates. Various problems, such as the rushed timeline of the electorate formation process and a lack of transparency in the same, led to the events described above.

We believe that a part of this stems from a lack of clear information in the SAC Constitution about the process of forming closed electorates and the level of autonomy various Hostel Councils and/or Institute Councils possess in the same. Apart from this, there is also ambiguity about the electorate lists (not) being public or at least being available to the candidates sufficiently in advance. A clear and well-defined process needs to be put in effect to avoid such complications in the future. This can include detailing the criteria based on which Hostel Councils can nominate people to be a part of the closed electorate. Further, a system of having separate nominations by the Hostel Councils and the respective Institute Councils can be explored to ensure all relevant stakeholders get a say in the election process. If not in the SAC Constitution, these aspects of conducting elections can be covered and mentioned in an “Election Operation Document” that can be shared with all stakeholders well in advance to ensure better-organized elections going forward.

In case of any queries, clarifications or feedback regarding the article, kindly reach out to the Chief Editors – Ayush Agarwal (210100035@iitb.ac.in), Ishita Poddar (21b030016@iitb.ac.in).

Editorial Credits: Anisha Basumatary, Mahor Nagda, Pratham Srivastava, Radhika Goyal, Sakshi Priya, Vaidehi Jha