AS Naura elected PUTA president 3rd yr in a row

The election was a three-cornered contest with 563 registered voters. Naura won the presidency with 239 votes, defeating Parveen Goyal of the University Institute of Technology (UIET) who received 210 votes, and Ashok Kumar of the Hindi Department who polled 105 votes

AS Naura from the department of biochemistry at Panjab University (PU) has been elected president of the Panjab University Teachers Association (PUTA) for a third consecutive year. Naura’s group secured all office-bearer posts except for joint secretary, which was won by Vishal Sharma of the Parveen Goyal group.

Panjab University Teachers Association president AS Naura (in chequered shirt) with his panel members after declaration of results in Chandigarh on Tuesday. (Keshav Singh/HT)

The election was a three-cornered contest with 563 registered voters. Naura won the presidency with 239 votes, defeating Parveen Goyal of the University Institute of Technology (UIET) who received 210 votes, and Ashok Kumar of the Hindi Department who polled 105 votes.

For the general secretary seat, Mritunjay Kumar, an assistant archivist at the AC Joshi Library, also secured his third consecutive victory with 216 votes. He triumphed over Suman Sumi (144 votes) and Jayanti Dutta (187 votes).

Simran Kaur of the evening studies department was elected vice-president with 249 votes.

Deepak Kumar of the University Institute of Engineering and Technology won the treasurer position with 274 votes.

The only win for the Parveen Goyal group was for Vishal Sharma, who was elected joint secretary with 238 votes, narrowly beating Tanzeer Kaur (232 votes) and Puja Ahuja (78 votes).

Executive committee & political landscape

From the executive groups, those elected include Gautam Bahl, Khushpreet Singh Brar, Nitin Arora and Sumedha Singh from executive group 1, Arun Bansal, Jaspreet Kaur, Rajat Sandhir and Vijay Kumar of group 2, Anupam Bahri, Amita Sarwal, Deepak Kumar Gupta and Neeraj Aggarwal of group 3, Keshav Malhotra of group 4 and Rajni of group 5.

Keshav Malhotra was elected unopposed for the ninth consecutive time. The third group, Teachers Voice United Front (TVUF) failed to secure any office-bearer seats. Although the group was close to Navdeep Goyal, he did not contest the polls, passing the baton to younger teachers.

It is noteworthy that the Naura-Mritunjay duo previously served together in PUTA in 2020, with Mritunjay as president and Naura as general secretary.