NEW DELHI: The United Left in the Jawaharlal Nehru University Student Union (JNUSU) polls maintained its position by winning all the four seats in the results announced on Sunday. This is also the first time in the last five years a woman is elected president of the student union.
The elections happened in the shadow of controversies like the anti-India sloganeering for which students were charged with a case of sedition; where student Najeeb Ahmed went missing from the campus after alleged brawl involving the members of RSS-affiliated Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), and reduction in number of seats in PhD.
With 58.69 percent of student voting which concluded on Friday, the Right has made an impact in the citadel of Left parties with ABVP becoming the second choice of the students in all the four office- bearer posts.
CPI(M) leader D. Raja’s daughter who debuted in the student union polls, Aparijhta Raja, fighting for the post of president from All India Student Union Federation (AISF) --the same party union of which the former president of JNUSU Kanhaiya Kumar was--got only 416 votes. AISF was not the part of the United Left front.
The newly elected president of JNUSU, Geeta Kumari of All India Student Association (AISA) got a total of 1,506 defeating Nidhi Tripathi of the ABVP with a margin of 464 votes. AISA has been continuously winning in the student union polls and was the main party in the United Left. The new Vice-President, Simone Zoya Khan also is from the AISA and got 1,876 votes.
The Left which includes All India Student Association (AISA) , Student Federation of India (SFI) and Democratic Student Federation (DSF) termed this as the "defeat of communal - fascist forces".
"This mandate is to save the democratic spaces, right now students are the only resistance and the credit goes to them only," said Geeta.
The next two posts, general secretary won by Duggirala Shrikrishna of Student Federation of India (SFI) polling 2,082 and joint secretary Shubhanshu Singh of Democratic Student Federation (DSF) fetched 1,755 votes.
“The JNUSU verdict reasserts the inclusive , democratic and egalitarian essence of JNU in the face of multi-prolonged assaults by the RSS, BJP and the administration nexus. It is a mandate to carry forward the struggle to safeguard the sanctity of JNU’s decision making bodies from partisan subversion by the V-C,” said Sucheta De, national president AISA.
The main rival of the United Front, the ABVP, has its morale high after pulling an impressive increase the number of votes. This year the union all together got 3,965 votes in the Central panel. This year the number of voters also reduced to 7,900 from 8,600 from last year.
“The Left model of politics is being rejected by the students of JNU year after year we are bettering are position. This year a total of three Left parties came together to oppose us, this shows they are worried. It is a moral victory of nationalist forces in a so-called leftist bastion” said Saket Bahuguna ABVP’s National spokesperson.