JNU poised to get back its poll fervour

The handmade posters, the impassioned ideological speeches and the nightlong vigil for poll results amid drum-beating and sloganeering may be back again.

The handmade posters, the impassioned ideological speeches and the nightlong vigil for poll results amid drum-beating and sloganeering may be back again.

HT Image

After four years, JNU’s elections, which students on the campus loved to see as time for festivity as well as cerebral debate, may kick off again once a students’ meet discusses the Supreme Court’s (SC) relaxation of some of the Lyngdoh Committee recommendations for JNU.

A campus known for ideologically oriented politics free of money or muscle had, ironically, borne the brunt of the Lyngdoh recommendations, which, too, were aimed at clean and peaceful campus politics.

“The stated purpose of the Lyngdoh Committee was to stop money and muscle in polls, and we never had that problem,” says Roshan Kishor, president of Delhi SFI, the CPM’s student wing. Former ABVP unit president Shiv Shakti Nath Bakshi says, “It’s a welcome step for student activism we had.”

In some respects — like an expenditure limit per candidate or the use of handmade rather than printed posters — JNU had been practising for decades what Lyngdoh recommended. Candidates would campaign on foot — spending just on food — and organisational activists would paint posters with ideological messages on patriarchy, Marxism or Hindutva and paste them across the campus.

Research scholar Vibha Iyer questions the Lyngdoh recommendation that political parties be dissociated from the election process: “This amounts to informed opinion getting scuttled. We call political leaders as representatives of a thought, exposure to which helps the student become a critical citizen.”