AMU Women’s College students ask the Minister of Education to restore voting rights; the university denies disenfranchisement

A view of Jama Masjid at Aligarh Muslim University in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh on October 28, 2026. | Photo credit: Shashi Shekhar Kashyap

A group of female students of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) has approached Union Education Minister Pralhad Joshi seeking his intervention to allow them to vote in the Student Union elections scheduled for November 5, 2026.

The Hindu reported on Monday (November 2, 2026) that more than 4,000 women students at the Women’s College were disenfranchised in the Aligarh Muslim University Students’ Union (AMUSU) elections.

In a statement to The Hind, the AMU denied any disenfranchisement. The students mentioned in the report were students of the Higher Vocational School for Women, where they were accepted and enrolled.

“Some of them were only allowed to attend classes in departments on the main campus, that does not make them students of those departments. They will vote in the elections for their own Students’ Union at the Women’s College, which are held on November 5, the same day as the AMUSU elections,” said the AMU public relations officer, adding that no female student was denied a vote.

The students sent a letter to Mr. Joshi, Minister of State for Education Jayant Chowdhury, Union Secretary for Higher Education Deepti Gaur Mukerjee and Additional Secretary Anandrao V. Patil. They said they had submitted their concerns to the National Task Force, chaired by Justice (retd) S. Ravindra Bhat, which studied mental health issues and alleged discrimination in higher education institutions.

“The withdrawal of voting rights from female university students from the AMU Student Union (AMUSU) together with the restriction of their voting rights to the university level makes the matter all the more urgent and requires immediate attention,” they said in the letter.

In a nine-page memorandum, a copy of which is with The Hindu, the students said the issue of women students’ voting rights and their exclusion from the AMUSU elections is about equal representation of students, electoral eligibility and institutional discrimination.

“The central issue is that undergraduates studying at Women’s College are denied the same democratic participation and representation at AMUSU as other female undergraduates at AMU. Previously, female students of Women’s College participated in AMUSU elections in 2010-11 and 2011-12 as recommended by the Lyngdoh Committee.

In 2012, the university arbitrarily reverted to separate union arrangements, citing geographic distance and the past existence of a separate College Students’ Union (WCSU), which was later formalized as a 2019 election ordinance.

The current election is being conducted in accordance with the 2019 Election Ordinance, which denies the right to vote and representation/contest to female college students of AMUSU and restricts their right to vote to the college level,” the students argued.

“The exclusion of female college students in general and FYUP (four-year undergraduate program) students in particular is a complete violation of their constitutional rights,” the complaint added.

“Female students should be given the option to continue their studies either in the departments or in the Women’s College. The number of seats allocated for female students should be brought to the same level as male students,” they demanded.

The memorandum also drew the minister’s attention to issues such as insufficient teaching staff, segregation in the residential education campus and walkout rules “of an extreme nature, denying female students some basic constitutional rights and freedoms and access to university resources”.

Published – 03 Nov 2026 23:08 IST