Last-minute campaigning through songs, drums, sloganeering and earnest appeals reached fever pitch and remained consistent throughout voting day at Jawaharlal Nehru University here on Friday. The students managed the show all by themselves and kept the cops out of the campus. The polling remained violence-free despite rival students’ associations vying for space and attention of the voters at the eleventh hour.
Each school at JNU has its own political affiliations. “The School of Social Sciences is known to vote for Students’ Federation of India and the School of Languages usually gives the All India Students’ Association its numbers,” said Gourab Ghosh, whose organisation, the SFI, had taken up space outside the SSS early in the morning and didn’t leave even when it was lunch time. “The cops had tried to come here after there was some scuffle but we were very adamant that we did not want them here during election time,” he added.
The Left Progressive Federation, which has the advantage of representing two organisations like the Democratic Students’ Federation and the All India Students’ Federation, had its members divided between the School of Environment Sciences, the School of International Studies and the SSS.
However, there were some organisations like the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and the National Students’ Union of India who did not have permanent space and their activists ran around from school to school and raised slogans wherever they could.
The candidates standing for the central posts of president, vice-president, secretary and joint secretary had their names and ballot numbers stuck to their person and ran from school to school appealing for last-minute votes.
Does last-minute campaign really help?“I usually make up my mind on the day of the presidential debate,” said Manisha Kumari, who has voted in three elections.
“I choose the candidate based on my personal associations,” said Kongan, a first-year student.
“The last-minute campaign can make a huge difference, especially for councillor posts. There are eleven posts to choose and this last-minute sloganeering and appeal can help them decide whom to vote for. As far as the central panel goes, their minds are already made up,” said Anjali Devi, who has seen three elections and was busy campaigning.
“There are a lot of people who are not present in the university, they miss out on the campaign and sometimes even the presidential debate because their Ph.D.s require field work but they come back especially for elections because elections here are like some festival,” said Aishwarya Bhattacharya, who is in her second election season and was also busy campaigning. At the end of the day, the voting percentage was 55, a slight increase from last year’s 53 per cent.
