‘Early bird’ NSUI releases manifesto
In an attempt to make the upcoming Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) elections more student-friendly, the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) for the first time released their manifesto even before the final list of candidates running for the four posts of DUSU has been announced. The union usually only releases their manifesto a couple of days before the polling date, however, this time they launched their manifesto well before time so that students were made aware of the issues they would be dealing with.
National president of NSUI Roji M John said that this time round, NSUI actually got feedback from students and prepared their manifesto which is why releasing it early was important. “We went from college-to-college and asked students what the real issues at hand were. We got lot of responses and after analysing these responses we put down the main issues that we would fight for. We wanted to release the manifesto early so that students could see that their voice is being heard,” said John, during a media briefing on Thursday.
One of the main issues that NSUI has pointed out in their manifesto is that of right to accommodation. “Section 33 of the Delhi University Act makes it compulsory to provide accommodation for the students of the university. DU, at present, has 15 off-campus hostels and nine colleges with boarding facilities on their premises. Out of nine, only five have accommodation for women. There are only 9,000 hostel seats available for the estimated 1.8 lakh students enrolled with DU. Due to this crunch, many students are forced to take up alternative accommodations, shelling out more money and living amid security concerns. DU has about 95 acres of barren land. NSUI wants DU administration to use this land for building more hostels,” reads the manifesto presented by the Congress-backed student organisation.
Other than this, fight against racial discrimination, the issue of revaluation, establishing uniform admission rules, making a placement cell and allowing students to earn while studying were some of the party’s top issues. The names of their candidates will be announced on Friday.