Odisha sets college union polling for 15 October, the first such vote since 2018

Odisha will hold students' union elections in colleges on 15 October, the first such vote since the process was suspended in 2018. Higher Education Minister Suryabanshi Suraj announced the dates on Monday after a meeting with Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi at Lok Seva Bhawan in Bhubaneswar. The Higher Education Department's communication of 5 October covers students' unions and other student societies in state public universities and in government and non-government aided degree colleges for the 2026-27 session.

The calendar is tight. Colleges issue the election notification on 7 October. Nominations are filed on 9 October between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. Scrutiny runs the same day from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., and the valid list is published at 5 p.m. Withdrawals are taken on 10 October from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., and the final candidate list comes out at 3 p.m. that day. A "Why I Stand For" meeting is set for 14 October. Polling is on 15 October from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Counting starts at 2 p.m. the same afternoon and runs until it is finished. The oath is at 11 a.m. on 16 October. Suraj told reporters the elected candidates would take the oath of office before noon that day.

Who can stand

Age limits follow the department guidelines. Undergraduate students on three-year degree programmes must be between 17 and 22 on the date of notification. Postgraduate students can contest up to 25. Those caps track the Lyngdoh Committee recommendations, which the minister said would govern the election. The committee, chaired by former chief election commissioner J.M. Lyngdoh, was the Supreme Court's answer in 2006 to campus polls that had become an extension of party machines. Its rules limit campaign spend, bar printed posters in some forms, and separate the union election from a party ticket. Odisha has said it will use that frame. It has not published a campus-by-campus list of where the vote will actually be held.

Suraj said the election is meant to prepare leadership, and that the state had needed time "to create a conducive atmosphere for conducting elections on different campuses." The BJP's 2024 manifesto for Odisha promised to resume the polls after the party took office. The gap from 2018 to 2026 is eight academic years in which no elected union sat in these colleges. Departments and principals ran student activity without a ballot.

What eight years without a union changes

A union election is a small vote with a specific machinery: a notification, a scrutiny hour, a withdrawal window, a same-day count. Odisha has now fixed every one of those hours. The political promise is older. The Biju Janata Dal governments after 2018 left the suspension in place. The new government has taken 16 months from its election to put a date on the paper. Suraj thanked the chief minister for approving the resumption.

The practical test is the 9 October nomination morning. If large colleges file full slates and the 15 October poll stays inside the 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. window, the Lyngdoh frame will have held for one cycle. If nominations are thin, or if polling is disrupted and the 16 October oath slips, the eight-year gap will have been reopened rather than closed. The department has not said how many colleges are in the first round. That number, when it comes, will show whether 15 October is a statewide vote or a limited restart.

For students who entered in 2019 or later, this is the first union ballot of their degree. The age band of 17 to 22 means a first-year student can stand. A student who was 17 when the polls stopped in 2018 is now past the undergraduate cap. The cohort that can contest is not the cohort that last voted.