Ham-fisted parties left licking their wounds as left-backed AISA snaps up all 4 seats
It was a weekend of high and low for the left-inclined All India Students’ Association (AISA) as they grabbed all the four seats in the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union (JNUSU) on Sunday after facing a defeat in the Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) elections on Saturday. Sweeping the polls at JNU for the second consecutive year, AISA managed to retain most of its vote share despite the controversial involvement of its previous JNUSU president Akbar Chaudhary in a sexual harassment case. AISA, affiliated to the Communist Party of India-Marxist leninist, won the posts of president, vice president, general secretary as well as joint secretary. It was a mixed bag for Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the BJP, as it lost on all the four seats just a day after its leaders were basking in the glory of having swept DUSU elections.
However, while AISA won the four seats in the union, it lost quite of its councillor seats. While last year AISA held 14 seats, now it only holds seven. Though AISA has usually had a stronghold in JNU, this year the general atmosphere was very deterring for the student union. That was also one of the reasons that they opened their wings to DU. This deviation of AISA in fact helped other student organisations set base in JNU.
The voting margins were a good indication of how Right-winged parties have entered the inner circle of JNU politics. As AISA’s Ashutosh Kumar, a student of Russian studies, was elected the president with 1,386 votes, he only defeated Rahilla Perween of the newly formed alliance left Progressive Front (lPF) by 377 votes. However, trailing third was no left organisation but instead ABVP’s Sourabh Kumar by only a shortage of 65 votes than Rahilla.
For the vice presidential post, AISA’s Anant Prakash Narayan, a student from school of law and governance, beat ABVP’s Muslim candidate Md Jahidul Dewan by 610 votes. Surprisingly, third in this position was neither lPF nor the Students’ Federation of India (SFI), but instead Congress’ National Students Union of India (NSUI) candidate Heena Goswami, lagging behind by 45 votes from Dewan.
AISA’s Chintu Kumari gave a significant lead of 814 votes to ABVP’s Ashish Kumar Dhanotiya. The once influential SFI, affiliated to the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), finished third.
For the post of joint secretary, Shafqat Hussain got 1,209 votes followed by lPF’s Mulayam Singh with 969 votes and ABVP’s Gopal lal Meena coming third with 857 votes.
Subsequently, in a surprise win, BJP student wing ABVP came second for the posts of vice president and general secretary and third for the post of president and joint secretary. In a campus dominated by the left ideology, ABVP managed to get a foothold. However, it is not only in the central panel that ABVP performed well, it also grabbed double of its previous seats in the JNU councillor’s election. ABVP won 12 seats out of a total of 31. last year the Parishad won only six seats.
While there are several reasons for ABVP to have won, including the BJP Government being in power, the member of the union have given credit to their good show to the ground level work they have done and the issues within the campus they have raised. “We talked about important issues like having 24 hour-health centre, a safety campus for woman, increase in fellowship and assistance for students from the North-East issues. These are issues that concern students, so they have believed in us and given u such huge share of votes,” said their vice presidential candidate Dewan, who is pursuing a PhD in Hindi literature.
After rising above from all the criticism it got, AISA credits its win to its performance in JNU last year. leaders of the newly elected JNUSU feel that the actual thing that matters is the work a union does for the students. Hussain, a student of Persian and Central Asian Studies, said, “last year when AISA lead JNUSU was there we had made central library a 24-hour open area, the JNU press autonomous, ‘other’ option in gender category in JNU forms and upgraded the placement cell with web portal. Our effort has been recognised.”
To celebrate their sweep in the campus, AISA held out a glorious victory march in the campus which was full of slogans of lal Salaam (Red Salute). Though AISA lost the DUSU elections it also had a reason to celebrate that as it marked their entry in DU just as the ABVP celebrated its entry into JNU. National secretary of ABVP Rohit Chahal said, “Students have reposed faith in ABVP and this is now an open challenge for all the left organisations. We have defeated them in their own territory. Student safety is an important issue and students who have voted for AISA should deeply think about it. We believe in nationalism and have always supported the right causes. In the councillor section, ABVP has won maximum seats. Internally all unions included NSUI conspired against ABVP but we still rose above that because of the support of students.”