With the final list of candidates declared by the Chief Election Commissioner for the Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) elections on September 3, student groups have only three working days to up the ante of their campaign before the September 9 elections.
Unlike previous years when the number of candidates for central panel posts were in double digits, this year there are just seven nominations for the post of president, four for vice-president, three for secretary and joint-secretary respectively.
The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) and All India Students’ Association (AISA) have filed nominations for all four posts. However, the Chhatra Yuva Sangharsh Samiti (CYSS), the Aam Aadmi Party’s student wing that made its debut last year, has chosen to sit out of the contest this year.
While the ABVP and NSUI will release their manifestos on Monday, AISA released its manifesto on Sunday itself.
“Anti-national”Stating that the manifesto will not be limited to just university-specific issues, the ABVP said it will address a growing trend seen across universities — where “anti-national” students have been glorifying terrorists and raising anti-India slogans, specifically in the aftermath of the February 9 incident at Jawaharlal Nehru University.
The NSUI candidates said in addition to their “women’s manifesto,” made and released after conducting a survey of female students, they will release a specific manifesto for students who come to study at DU from the north-east region.
Stating that his campaign will be about vote-for-change, Nikhil Yadav, the NSUI candidate for the post of DUSU president, said the ABVP has brought to the campus a culture of hooliganism over the past two years and that it does not have any achievements to show for over the past year.
“muscle power tactics”A meritorious student, Nikhil said: “I scored over 90 per cent to get into DU and an all India rank of 31 in the Common Law Admission Test [CLAT]. DU, as a university that attracts people with high marks, deserves a president who has an academic record to represent him/her instead of a president who indulges in muscle power tactics.”
AISA, which has been facing heat from the opposition after one of its members was accused of rape, has fielded three women candidates.
Kawalpreet Kaur, the AISA candidate for the post of president, said: “While the ABVP’s outgoing panel is a zero-achievement panel, the NSUI does not even exist on campus. AISA is the only organisation working towards solving student-related issues and providing an alternative to the caste-based, and muscle and money defined politics being practised on campus.”
Kawalpreet added that the ABVP and NSUI try to win elections by polarising student votes based on caste instead of focusing on student issues. She also spoke against the way in which students affiliated to the ABVP have been attacking students, teachers and the helping staff over the past year.
In its manifesto, AISA has also listed a charter of struggles on students’ issues. The charter includes issues like furthering of the “A Room of My Own” campaign, developing infrastructure, constitution of an active grievance committee, setting up of a committee on sexual harassment and gender discrimination, demand for accountable functioning of the DUSU and reforming the DU election system to bring in effective forms of debate.
