New Delhi: The RSS-affiliate ABVP prevailed over youth sentiments, registering an emphatic victory in DUSU polls on Saturday, deflecting the headwinds three months after the Gen Z protest at Jantar Mantar and more recently, the Satya Niketan tragedy that claimed the lives of five Delhi University students.
The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad swept the DUSU panel but for one post, with its candidate, Yash Dabas, set to become president.
In the elections held on Friday, the Congress’s NSUI fought valiantly but lost all four Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) posts.
Deepanshu, an NSUI rebel-turned-Independent, won the post of joint secretary, defeating ABVP’s Ishu Maurya, his closest rival.
The student election at Delhi University has traditionally been a direct contest between the ABVP, covertly supported by the BJP, and the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI), the Congress’s student wing.
The ABVP bagged three posts, with Dabas defeating NSUI’s Vijay Shankar Meena by 2,053 votes for the post of president. Riya Chhawdi and Lakshya Raj Singh won the posts of secretary and joint secretary.
Ratna Singh, a leader of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) that led the Jantar Mantar protest in June, said that the agitation was targeted at seeking redressal of the NEET paper leak three months ago.
“Since the Jantar Mantar protest, we have been actively addressing other issues related to students and youth, like the condition of schools in the states. The DUSU elections were a different space that we did not directly engage with,” she told PTI.
BJP leader Vijay Goel, who served as DUSU president during 1977-78, asserted that the Gen Z protest was not against the BJP or its government at the Centre.
“The Jantar Mantar protest was basically against the NEET paper leak issue, which the government finally addressed and resolved. You cannot say that the youth were against the BJP or the government,” he told PTI.
Goel, a former Union minister, said that the Congress outfit was hoping to leverage the sentiment after the Jantar Mantar protest, but the students were not influenced by it.
The ABVP has had a strong presence among the students, despite the political situation in the country, he added.
During the DUSU polling campaign on its North and South campuses, students expressed their political awareness of incidents directly affecting them.
The collapse of a paying guest building at Satya Niketan, a locality abutting DU’s South Campus, on September 6, was a major rallying point during the campaign. Five of the seven dead in the tragedy were college students.
Deepanshu, who won the DUSU vice-president post, gained popularity after he gave up wearing footwear in protest over the tragedy.
Students said the impact of the Jantar Mantar protest was less about direct opposition or support for any organisation and more about reassessing what different outfits represented and advocated for.
“Students have been increasingly antagonised over the last few years. It made many of us question the positions taken by different student organisations and whether they actually represented the issues that students were raising or toed their party line,” said a Hindu College student.
Congress national secretary and co-in-charge of Karnataka, Ajay Dutt, alleged that the BJP “influenced” even DUSU elections, as it did in state and national polls.
“Our candidate was leading for the post of president in the last rounds by around 500 votes and ultimately was declared defeated. The BJP misused the administration to influence the results,” he charged.
The BJP leaders said the ABVP victory carries a “big message” in itself despite Rahul Gandhi “doing his best” to “mislead and misguide” the youth.
The NSUI, which dominated DUSU for a long time in its earlier years, is now reduced to zero, the BJP said.
“Congress and youth can’t be together,” a leader said.
