KSA dismisses speaker of council, disqualifies 5 candidates for slating after releasing election results

In early April, the Kwantlen Student Association dismissed previous speaker of council Sukhdeep Singh from his position and disqualified five candidates who ran in the 2025 general elections after the official results were released on March 25.

Sukhdeep and three of the five disqualified candidates The Runner spoke to — Tejas Pathania, Aditya Kapoor, and Gurparv Singh — said they received notice of their removals the morning of April 7, hours before the KSA held a council meeting at 2:00 pm that day.

Speaker’s dismissal

KSA Executive Director Timothii Ragavan informed Sukhdeep of his dismissal via email. In the notice, which The Runner viewed, Ragavan wrote that his position was terminated effective immediately as of April 5.

“This decision is being made following council decision on the performances as Speaker,” he wrote in the termination notice. “After careful consideration, the Council has determined that it is in the best interest of the KSA to make this change.”

During an April 11 council meeting, Ragavan said the council made the decision during an in-camera meeting on Feb. 14, and the new speaker, Amandeep Kaur Brar, a former KSA student representative during the 2023-24 term, was also appointed that day.

“The reason was determined in-camera, so I cannot disclose information,” he said during the council meeting.

The KSA speaker is a non-voting member of the council who is appointed by a two-thirds resolution for a renewable one-year term. Those chosen for this role are recommended by the council’s internal committee, according to the KSA’s bylaws.

Sukhdeep said he did not receive feedback from Ragavan or the council prior to his removal.

“I have met KSA people in person because now they … know me as a speaker, so they do talk,” he said. “There were sometimes feedbacks, but then they all disappeared after November because I think that is the time when I really settled in. I was like, ‘OK, this is how we do it.’”

In an email statement to The Runner, Ragavan wrote Sukhdeep was “provided with multiple feedback on different opportunities on his performance.”

“However, the Council determined that Sukhdeep Singh was not able to perform the job responsibilities of the office of the Speaker including chairing fully and efficiently the Council Meetings,” he wrote in the statement. 

Sukhdeep said he does not understand why he was allowed to chair the KSA’s annual general meeting in March if the association found he was not performing well at his job. He also wonders why his term was set to expire on April 5.

“Why was I only informed [on April 7]? I know it’s their right, but then why was I preparing on Saturday and Sunday [for Monday’s council meeting]? Why was I reading the regulations and bylaws? Doesn’t my time have value for [Ragavan]? Isn’t 52 days a considerable time?”

In an email he sent to the KSA after finding out about his dismissal on April 7, Sukhdeep wrote he has not received documentation confirming an “approved agenda entry, attendance list, and in-camera minutes exist that record a valid vote.”

“Since I was the speaker, I checked regularly if anything was uploaded, and I did not find anything regarding the 14 Feb 2025 in-camera [session] where anything was stated,” Sukhdeep wrote in his email to the KSA.

In an email statement to The Runner, Ragavan wrote that business that takes place in in-camera meetings cannot be disclosed to third parties and that the information is confidential, as outlined in the KSA’s regulations and bylaws. Sukhdeep’s dismissal was discussed in-camera as it falls under human resources matters, in accordance with the KSA’s bylaws, he added.

“Why [was I] removed? In very plain terms, that is a question’s answer which I am searching for, too,” Sukhdeep said.

Candidate disqualifications

In a letter dated April 6, which three of the disqualified candidates The Runner spoke to said was sent via email the next day, Chief Returning Officer (CRO) Gurinder Singh Gaddu wrote that he disqualified five candidates for alleged expressed or apparent slating.

The candidates were Tejas Pathania, Aditya Kapoor, and Naimish Kumar, who each ran as business representatives, as well as Gurparv Singh and Prabhleen Kaur, who ran as arts representative and science and horticulture representative respectively. 

A slate is defined in the KSA’s bylaws as “two or more candidates running for elected office in a coordinated fashion to achieve a mutual advantage in an election.”

With the exception of Kumar, four of the candidates were announced as elected councillors in the March 25 official election results. Their respective seats on council have since been filled. 

“As these candidates are not qualified to take office as they have been disqualified for slating as per the KSA Bylaws and Regulations, they have not been elected,” Gaddu’s letter read.

The four were each present and serving as student representatives at the April 2 council meeting.

“We were all councillors after April 1. We were not candidates who were running in elections,” Pathania said. “We passed the finish line.”

Gaddu wrote in the letter that there was a prior investigation into Pathania, Kapoor, and Kumar, who were each accused of running in a slate. This investigation did not include Gurparv or Kaur.

The evidence he gathered into the claims were verbal and written reports of the three candidates allegedly campaigning together and telling students to vote according to a predetermined list of students that included them, Gaddu wrote. 

“I also personally observed candidates Tejas Pathania and Aditya Kapoor campaigning together in a manner inconsistent with KSA election rules and issued a verbal warning at the time,” Gaddu wrote in an email statement to The Runner.

In his decision, Gaddu added he allegedly overheard students telling other students to only vote for Pathania, Kapoor, and Kumar.

“[A]fter I provided Mr. Pathania with a verbal warning about campaigning in accordance with the rules, Mr. Pathania apologized, indicating that he was aware he was engaging in prohibited behavior,” he wrote in the letter.

Gaddu’s decision also mentioned Pathania threatened him when they spoke.

“[W]hen I provided the verbal warning to Mr. Pathania about his conduct, he threatened me, stating that if I disqualified him I would have to bear serious consequences,” the letter read.

Pathania denies threatening Gaddu, adding that he did not use the conversation to apologize nor confess to slating either.

“The CRO came to me. I asked him about the business-seat criteria … [and] how many students match this criteria,” Pathania said. “That was the only conversation I had with the CRO at that moment.”

He said that he was not standing with Gaddu for more than 20 to 30 seconds and the allegation of threatening Gaddu was not brought up to him during the March slating investigation.

Gaddu wrote to The Runner that the alleged incident was not central to his initial review of slating claims, but it informed his “broader understanding of the situation and Mr. Pathania’s conduct throughout the election process.”

“At the time, I chose not to escalate the comment, interpreting it as bluster,” Gaddu wrote in his email statement. “However, considering subsequent behavior and the gravity of the allegations that emerged, I now believe that statement constituted a threat.”

Pathania told The Runner the initial slating claim from Gaddu began on March 11 and included him and Kapoor, with Kumar being added a few days later.

As president of the Hindu Student Association (HSA), Pathania said he organized various events with the club’s members, including Kapoor, and this information was sent to Gaddu.

“We said there could be a vast number of students who might have specifically voted for us because they knew us from the HSA,” Pathania said.

Kapoor said he and Pathania also have more than 250 mutual friends on Instagram and similar classes, and he provided screenshots from Instagram and KPU transcripts as proof to Gaddu.

On March 24, a day before releasing the official election results, Gaddu dismissed the allegations against the three.

“The initial decision to dismiss the allegations was made because the evidence, while troubling, was primarily circumstantial,” Gaddu wrote in his email to The Runner.

Gaddu wrote in his decision that he later analyzed the election results for irregularities and found about 85 of the 1,089 voters only cast their votes for Pathania, Kapoor, and Kumar, and over 50 of the 1,089 voters only cast votes for the five candidates named in his decision.

“Given the number of candidates on the ballot, there were thousands of possible combinations for how voters could cast their votes,” Gaddu wrote. “However, an overwhelmingly large number of voters only casted votes for the five candidates named in this decision.”

Pathania said he could not spot the same findings in the votes from his manual review of the election results from Simply Voting. In an email to Gaddu on April 7, Gurparv wrote he reviewed the results with his lawyers and found it doesn’t align with the decision.

Gaddu stood by his decision in his statement to The Runner, writing that “the data speaks for itself.”

“In a democratic election with numerous candidates and diverse choices, this kind of uniformity is statistically improbable unless the voting was coordinated,” he wrote to The Runner. “These patterns, combined with the context of the earlier complaints, provide strong, irrefutable evidence of slating.”

Gurparv also wrote in his email to Gaddu that he did not get the opportunity to respond to the slating allegations prior to the decision.

“Me and Prabhleen received disqualification letters without ever being contacted or informed of any concerns prior, further underscoring the systemic procedural misconduct in this election,” Gurparv wrote.

Pathania said during the council’s first meeting on April 2, he and his fellow disqualified peers had disagreements with other councillors regarding appointments for the executive committee and carrying out secret ballots. They wanted the secret ballots to be sent to Advocacy Coordinator John O’Brian as opposed to Ragavan as well as to pass a motion to extend the meeting to form the executive committee, which failed because it did not receive a two-thirds majority. 

“The next meeting, the four of us got disqualified,” Pathania said. “What the CRO did is completely unethical.”

Sukhdeep said he thinks there is a pattern between his removal as an “unbiased speaker” and the dismissal of the “main opposition” in the council.

“Consider democracy — it was hanged on April 7 at 2:00,” Sukdeep said. “This is what happened in that meeting. If you consider a democracy a person, he was hanged.”

In his email to The Runner, Gaddu wrote he did not make his decision lightly.

“My decision preceded and is entirely unrelated to any developments at the first Council meeting,” he wrote. “After considering all evidence, re-analyzing the voting data, and reviewing responses from affected candidates, I remain confident that the disqualifications were necessary and justified.”