FAISALABAD, May 15: All ‘biradaris’ in the University of Agriculture Faisalabad are set for annual elections to the syndicate scheduled for May 17 and the faculty members are engaged in canvassing for their fellows supported by respective clans.

While Jat and Arain generally hold sway, other castes like Rana, Gujjar, Shah, Ansari, Mughal and Malik hardly come to the fore through elections and they have been tagged “other contingencies or the third world”.

Election would be held for three seats — professor, assistant professor and lecturer. As many as 70 professors, 65 assistant professors and 110 lecturers would cast their votes to elect the syndicate members for one year. Polling would start at 8:30am in the STC hall and it would continue till 2pm.

UAF registrar Muhammad Husain will serve as election commissioner.

Sources said an associate professor, Dr Manzoor Ahmad of agri-engineering department has been elected unopposed syndicate member for he is supported by the Arain.

Another associate professor of the same clan, Dr Muhammad Afzal of entomology department was his rival but the candidate had to surrender as the ‘biradari’ decided to go with Dr Manzoor.

The biradari-supporters are focused on the professor’s seat on account of its influence and two candidates of Jat clan are in the run for the slot. They are: Dr Zafar Iqbal Randhawa of Veterinary Parasitology and Dr Anayat.

Dr Randhawa is believed to be an outspoken critic of the caste system in the university. Sources said owing to this few of Jats and their ally clans’ elders had decided not to support Mr Randhawa and fielded Dr Muhammad Anayat for the slot.

Now, the latter has been conspicuously enjoying the support of Jats and others and meetings have also been arranged in the favour of Dr Anayat by these clans. Both candidates had been the presidents of the Academic Staff Association — a sole representative body of faculty members.

Sources said the faculty members of different departments were fully supporting Mr Randhawa, as the latter when he was the president of ASA, had done his utmost for the promotions of teachers.

Keeping in view the caste of professors, a list has also been prepared by the elders of major ‘biradries’ as they could be able to gain support for their candidates. The list made available to Dawn revealed that as many as 18 professors belong to Jat family and 14 each to other contingency, Arain and Rana family.

The candidates for assistant professors slot are Tasleem Mustafa from computer department and Islamuddin Shahzad from chemistry department.

Those in the run for lecturers’ seats include Ijaz Ashraf of agri-extension and Sajid Sindhu from plant breeding and genetics department. Both are backed by Jats. Third candidate Ashar Mahfooz belongs to the Syed family and he had already served on the same slot last year.