The counting of votes for the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union polls started on Saturday. Nearly 73% of the university’s 5,600 students cast their ballot in the election on Friday. The results will be declared on Sunday.
JNU has been a stronghold of the Left parties over the past many years. However, given the four-year-long gap in the student body polls due to the pandemic-induced lockdown and later, the process of PhD admissions, the RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) hopes to come to power on the back of new voters.
In a statement on Saturday, the ABVP said it had won councillor posts in schools such as the School of Computer and Systems Sciences, School of Engineering, and School of Sanskrit and Indic Studies. However, the Left alliance leaders said these trends were “misleading” as they were primarily drawn from the science schools, where the RSS-affiliated outfit was expected to lead.
Meanwhile, Swati Singh, the general secretary candidate of the United Left Panel, who was disqualified by the university’s election commission (EC) hours before the voting, continued her hunger strike on Saturday. She was joined by several other university students who sought re-election for the post.
Ms. Singh received a notice from the EC cancelling her nomination a few days after an ABVP member complained to authorities, arguing that she could not contest the polls due to “pending proctorial fines”.
Following Ms. Singh’s disqualification, the United Left Panel urged the students to vote for the BAPSA candidate.
