While Lucknow University finally cracked down late last night and suspended 21 students plus fined them Rs 1,000 each for defacing the campus with election banners and posters, what they didn’t do may make more news. All the big names were absent from the list. Express took a round of the campus today to find countless posters of wannabe president Bajrangi Singh ‘Bajju’ and the front-runner for the post of general secretary, Ram Singh Rana, still dotting the walls. Subhash Yadav, another key aspirant for the general secretary’s post who’s locked in a fight with Rana for a Samajwadi Party ticket, stands out as prominently in posters and graffiti. The 21 students suspended and fined are small fry, many of them contesting for the first time. Questioning the ‘‘selective action’’, many of the 21 say authorities clearly don’t want to have trouble on their hands. ‘‘Action has only come against us and not against the big leaders as otherwise they would create a ruckus on the campus. They enjoy political patronage,’’ said Abhishek Tiwari, one of the suspended students. A total of 50-odd students are in the fray for different posts in the coming students’ union elections. On August 16, LU authorities had served notices on almost all of them, asking them to remove poll-related material from campus walls within three days as this was in contravention of a 1998 high court ruling. However, when few took the order seriously, the authorities had waited for a week and then themselves started removing the posters. Two more notices were later served on the students, the last on September 13. When that too failed to evoke response, university authorities got the campus videographed to identify the offenders. Last night’s action followed from this. Vinay Gupta is among the students suspended as a result. He charges that LU authorities chickened out of action against Bajju and Ram Singh Rana as these leaders enjoy considerable clout even among senior university officials. Contacted for comment, LU Proctor V D Misra first claimed that the absolved student leaders had removed their election material. However, when told that Express had today taken pictures of their posters on campus, Misra quickly modified. ‘‘The present action has come against students who had scribbled graffiti over campus walls. We are still to proceed against those who have put up posters. Take my word, action will come against the big names also,’’ he says. As the next step, the university is likely to announce the date for the LUSU elections tomorrow, with District Magistrate Aradhana Shukla holding a meeting with police and university officials in this regard. Students had gheroed the Vice-Chancellor yesterday evening demanding elections by the month-end. Facing action Monu Singh, Neeraj Kumar Singh Yadav, Sudhir Kumar Shukla, Neeraj, Arvind Kumar, Rananjay Bhartiya, Pawan Kumar Singh, Sadanand Tiwari, J M Nana, Jetendra Singh Yadav, Abhishek Tiwari, Janardhan Mishra, Amit Kumar Singh Panju, Amit Kanaujia, Amit, Vinay Gupta, Satyendra Singh, Ranjit Singh Rana, Ankur Kumar Singh Sheru, Shishi Mahajan, Neeraj Kumar Spared the rod Bajrangi Singh ‘Bajju’, Ram Singh Rana, Ravinder Kumar Rajju, Subhash Yadav, Vijay Kumar Singh ‘Tintoo’, Sudhir Kumar Shukla ‘Dolly’
