After a grueling election campaign that lasted over a month, students at BITS-Pilani have their new student union. And now the members recall the days of no sleep, no classes and no labs, where they would be out in the campus talking to students, strategising and planning their campaign.
Prudhvi Potluri, the new president of the student union, remembers the many hours he spent on the election campaign. He says with a laugh, “Please ask how many hours did we not spend campaigning. Our whole schedule was different. We would go to sleep around 10 am, wake up at 4 pm and then go out campaigning. Till 12 am we would talk to students and then till 5 am we would be planning the campaign. The only thing everyone talked about in the campus was the election.”
For Prudhvi the win was a culmination of all the work he has been doing since the past two years. “If I don’t have a girlfriend today, it’s because I have always been busy with work,” he says with a laugh, adding, “We had been planning this since nine months. And now, we are the voice of the students.”
But his win was a surprise. “They first announced that the winner had won with a majority of 170 votes and I started walking back. Then suddenly I heard my name. There was so much of shouting, people picked me up and threw me in the air.”
Vishnu Reddy, the new sports secretary, had dreamt of holding the post right from his first year.
But Vishnu says his work is not just about organising a sports fest. “I want to develop a sporting culture here. We have state-of-the-art facilities in our own campus and it’s time we used them well.”
And the cultural secretaries can’t be left behind. While Srujana Rao Y. won the post as the unanimous candidate, K. Keshava Chandra Sai won with 400 votes. Srujana says, “From now on, Keshava and I are in charge of all the events on campus.”
Talking about how being a part of the student union helps them, Keshava says, “It makes a big difference. We will be able to hone our leadership skills as we will be leading everyone now.”
