ABVP may call NSUI’s win incidental but it is a pointer to 2019 general election
While the jury is still out on whether it is a major upset for the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-backed Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) or an incidental Congress-backed National Students’ Union of India win as the hard-pressed ABVP is trying to portray, the facts lie somewhere in the middle. Coming at a time when the BJP is on a purposeful trot towards the 2019 general election, the campus defeat after two years of clean sweeps and dominance in the preceding year, does not bode well for the Right-wing outfit. Though the ABVP insists that its overall vote share was unaffected, the two top positions of the president and vice president being wrested from the ABVP, first time in four years, should lead to some deep and obvious introspection in the saffron camp. More so because the ABVP’s resounding wins in 2014 and 2015 were tagged on to the ‘Modi wave’ sweeping the nation. Incumbent DUSU president Rocky Tuseed, who fought the election after the court’s nod despite his candidature being cancelled by Delhi University’s election committee, beat ABVP’s Rajat Chaudhary by 1,590 votes and has since gone on a “saffron safaya from the campus upwards” celebratory chant. The Congress, going downhill on popularity charts for a long time at the national level, will be ecstatic about this youth push to its sagging fortunes. For the BJP, no kind of reverses at any level, especially among the students community which signifies the youth mindset of its voters for the big one coming up in 2019, are viable. Coming so close on the heels of the JNUSU defeat where the campus turned left again, relegating ABVP to a second entity should be worrying for the saffron brigade.
The chirp on the campus is about the Government’s stringent policies around higher education and exorbitant tuition fees leading to disquiet. This is seen to have been further pushed by the Ramjas College violence and the forced cancellation of a play on nationalism at the Khalsa College, signalling the disenchantment of the student community with combative politics associated with the ABVP. Now that the simple student union elections have been given a national level poll tussle marker, the BJP will have to take note of the wave sweeping its campuses. Rajasthan, a BJP State, saw major reverses for the Right-wingers on the campus which was unexpected for ABVP who lost all the three top posts, especially when Rajasthan has a BJP Government at the helm. Panjab University, too, sided with an Independent candidate as President with NSUI bagging two posts and ABVP getting just one of the top four posts, that of the joint secretary. Time for a chintan sabhaIJ Definitely, and specially when when the Modi-Shah combine believes in and works on systematic decimation of opposition with clear-cut policies and agenda, something that its students wing will need a fresh lesson in.