The Delhi High Court will hear Ruby Malik's petition on Tuesday.
If there's one person all political parties should be watching very carefully this election season in Delhi, it's a 20-year-old student from Delhi University. The third year student of Law faculty called Ruby Malik has challenged the way student elections are being conducted by all parties, including the party with a difference Aam Aadmi Party's student wing called CYSS and the Delhi High Court is scheduled to hear her petition on Tuesday.
"All you have to do is to see the huge hoardings around campus of the Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, and you know the amount that they are spending,'' said Ms Ruby while speaking on NDTV's show 'Agenda', who said that she has no connection with any political party and neither is she interested in contesting the polls.
Her interest, she said, is only in ensuring that everyone has a level playing field and that the Lyngdoh Committee guidelines which were accepted by Supreme Court be implemented fully.
The Lyngdoh panel says that each candidate mustn't spend more than 5,000 rupees and that no defacement of property can be done. There can be no vehicle rallies and no printed posters, only handmade ones. A trip to any campus shows how all these guidelines are routinely flouted.
"The expenditure can be anything up to lakhs,'' said one person distributing pamphlets in Bhagat Singh College," Last year, they offered movie tickets to voters and trips to fun food village- all of that costs a lot of money,'' he said.
When NDTV contacted the Delhi Police, a spokesperson confirmed that all parties were equally being booked for defacing property. "They are buying ad spaces at bus stands to promote the theory that they are getting 46% votes," said the police officer of AAP's role, adding, "Even ABVP and NSUI are defacing property.'' While the police was only registering cases for that, it was up to University authorities to take up cases of code of conduct violations-something every party was violating.
"We want the High Court to pass a written order to ensure that the Lyngdoh committee guidelines are properly implemented," said Ruby Malik. There are now just 4 days left for polls-will the court intervene?