The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad has won the president’s post in the prestigious Allahabad University Students’ Union, traditionally a bastion of socialist-leftist parties.
ABVP also secured the position of joint secretary, while the other three posts—vice-president, general secretary and cultural secretary—were won by the Samajwadi Chhatra Sabha, the students body of the Samajwadi Party, which currently rules Uttar Pradesh. The ABVP is the students wing of the RSS-BJP, and it has won the top post for the first time since the restoration of student union elections in the central university in 2012.
Rohit Mishra of ABVP defeated the SCS’ Ajit Yadav by a thin margin of 95 votes to win the president’s election. While Mr. Mishra secured 3,397 votes, Mr. Yadav, also known as ‘Vidhayak’ got 3,302.
The SCS candidates, however, saw its candidates Adeel Hamza (Sahil) and Shivbalak Yadav elected as vice-president and general secretary. Mr. Hamza defeated his nearest rival by 120 votes in a tight battle, while Mr. Yadav secured a comfortable win. The SCS’ Manish Kumar Saini got elected as the cultural secretary while the ABVP’s Abhishek Kumar Pandey won the joint secretary post. The election results were declared late night on Friday.
Last year, while independent candidate Richa Singh, who was supported by the SCS, won the president’s election, the other four were bagged by the ABVP, which has made its presence felt in the AU in the last few years.
Ms. Singh created history when she became the first female president since independence, and perhaps only the second in history of the university. In 2012, Shalu Yadav had become the first girl student to be elected vice-president in 28 years. This year, however, few female candidates were in the running.
Established on September 23, 1887, the fourth oldest university in the country, AU was once known as the ‘Oxford of the East.’ But it lost its Central University status nearly three decades ago and only regained it in 2005, after a sustained campaign. 2005 was also the year when the Student union elections were banned in the varsity.
Apart from catering to the educational aspirations of the youth of the impoverished Purvanchal, its student body, the AUSU, has long been a spring board for political ambitions of students and their gateway to mainstream politics. A host of distinguished people, including one President and two Vice-Presidents, three Prime Ministers (one, acting), several Chief Ministers, Union and State ministers, and four Chief Justices of India, have been on its rolls. Chandra Shekhar, V.P. Singh, N.D Tiwari, Shankar Dayal Sharma, Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna, Madan Lal Khurana and Janeshwar Mishra are among the many stalwarts who started their political career in AU, which is spread over a sprawling campus in the city of the Sangam.
Ever since the restoration of the AUSU, the SCS has dominated the elections winning in 2012, 2014 and 2015, when it supported Ms. Singh, an independent who later joined the SP.
