The Congress-backed panel made a clean sweep in the Gujarat University Senate election on Tuesday. Almost 80 % seats have been captured by Congress-backed candidates, giving nightmare to the vice chancellor-backed panel and the teachers association.

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The scrutiny committee first declared the results of Registered Graduate category of Arts, Law, Education and Science faculties. Only Jagdish Bhavsar, a BJP backed candidate from the Arts faculty, managed to retain the senate berth. Remaining seats went to the Congress backed candidates.

This victory has pumped new enthusiasm in Congress leaders, who were hiding their faces after losing to the BJP in recently held civic elections.

In the Registered Graduate category, Congress backed Jayanti Patel won from Law faculty, Satish Patel from Science faculty and Bharat Patel from Education faculty.

In a strange incident, the committee declared that Rajesh Patel, a BJP backed candidate and current senate member, got zero vote, and he lost to Satish Patel. It means that even his own vote didn't go to him.

Many see this as a backdoor understanding between these two candidates to keep away other opponents. Political critics had already predicted such an alliance and understanding between BJP and Congress when the senate elections were announced for 27 seats.

The winning candidates celebrated their victory by bursting fire-crackers and dancing to the loud tunes of drummers. Prominent Congress leader Narhari Amin, who is also a nominated senate member, was present.

Apart from these four seats of Registered Graduate category, few other categories also made Congress happy. Aniruddh Patel and Janak Patel won in the Governing Body category.

In the Donors category, Maulin Shah and Pramit Nanavati won.

When the scrutiny committee opened ballot boxes of much awaited 'Teachers Category', the committee was shocked to see 180 'extra' votes in the ballot box.

According to the figures provided to the state Home Department, the number of voters for that category was 1,335. But the committee found 1,515 votes in the box. Many saw this as a clear case of tempering with the ballot box to favour some candidates.

Jaswant Thakker of the Teachers category  made allegations to the V-C about this. He later filed an official complaint with the police.

Late in the evening, five candidates were declared winners in the Teachers category. There were total 35 candidates for 19 seats. Among the winners, 3 belonged to Congress and 2 belonged to the Teachers association.

Dharamsinh Desai, Digvijay Sinh Gohil, and Mayuri  Pandya from Congress made it, and Jaswant Thakker and Ramesh Chaudhari of Teachers Association made it to the senate.