Chandigarh, Nov. 25 -- Even if Panjab University (PU), which is under immense pressure from protesters, releases the senate election schedule today, November 25, as promised, the actual polls remain months away due to the mandatory timelines built into the PU calendar and the complex nature of the graduate constituency. According to the PU calendar, the registered graduate constituency requires 240 days between the issuance of the election notification and the polling date. For all other constituencies, the minimum window is 90 days. A key reason for the 240-day window for the graduate constituency polls is the sheer scale of the electorate - there are over 3.5 lakh registered graduate voters across Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Rajasthan and Jammu & Kashmir. For contestants to reach out to the electorate and for the varsity to fulfil the logistical requirements, the varsity calendar has put in place the large gap between the poll notification date and the actual day of polling. Though this is the single-largest constituency, it sends 15 members to the 91-member senate and represents the alumni's voice in university governance. Five years after graduating, any alumnus can register as a graduate voter, and once on the rolls, they can also contest elections. During the 2021 elections, nearly Rs.3 crore had been spent on the senate elections, with the graduate constituency consuming the largest share. As per PU officials, the graduate voters' list has not been reauthenticated even once since 1966, when the varsity became an inter-state body following the enactment of the Punjab Reorganisation Act. There are multiple other complications - there is no provision to delete the voters' names once added, no Aadhaar linkage and no mechanism within PU to verify or filter the rolls and heavy dependence on manual records across states. Registrar and returning officer YP Verma said, "The revision and filtering out of these registered graduates can only be possible through technological intervention, which the university does not have." A senior PU official added that revising the list would take another full year and be "commercially taxing," given the size of the electorate and geographical spread of voters. Last week, when the registrar and the secretary to the vice-chancellor Krishan Kumar Saluja travelled to Delhi to discuss the pending senate schedule, they submitted detailed data to the Ministry of Education on the issues that have been posing challenges in senate elections, including the size and functioning of the graduate constituency. Registrar Verma also conveyed that the university is "in serious trouble" referring to the ongoing protests and urged the Centre to approve the election schedule so that they can make the announcement "at the earliest."...