Education minister Bratya Basu on Friday said the state government was keen on conducting elections to college and university students’ unions “in a free and fair way” and wanted the participation of Opposition parties’ student outfits in the polls.

“We are keen on conducting elections to students’ unions in a free and fair way. We want unions owing allegiance to Opposition parties to take part in the polls. Dates would be announced taking into account the Covid-19 situation,” Basu said in response to a question on the possibility of campus elections.

Polls at unitary universities like Presidency and Jadavpur were last held in December 2019.

Elections in colleges could not be held following the onset of Covid-19.

Since campuses reopened in the middle of February after a two-year gap, the state government has been exploring the possibility of conducing the polls.

Basu’s emphasis on free and fair elections reminded some about what had happened in February 2013 at Harimohan Ghose College in Garden Reach here during his previous tenure as the minister.

As students affiliated to the wings of the Congress and the CPM had engaged in clashes with those of the Trinamul Congress Chhatra Parishad over nomination forms, a Calcutta Police officer who was posted outside the college was shot dead.

“Things were not much different before the change of guard in 2011. The minister is speaking about conducting free and fair polls, but it is difficult to execute that. During the tenure of the Left Front, the SFI used to sweep the polls. Now, it is the turn of the TMCP,” said a vice-chancellor.

The West Bengal Universities and Colleges (Composition, Functions and Procedure for Election of Students’ Council) Rules, 2017, states the elections would be a biennial affair.

Initially, the new rules had suggested that the vice-chancellor would nominate the president, vice-president and the treasurer of the students’ union from among teachers.

But an amendment brought about by the higher education department in November 2018 had stripped the teacher representatives of the sole responsibility of managing council funds as treasurer, a provision inserted by the same government in 2017, to put an end to complaints of misuse of funds and students’ conflict over control of the corpus.

Class representatives were allowed to act as assistant treasurer and share the responsibility of managing funds allocated to the students’ council of a college or university.

Basu said on Friday that his department would wait for suitable advice from the health department before taking a call on whether there was a need to shut down schools following the latest surge in Covid cases.