The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) has swept the DU Students’ Union (DUSU) polls. The polls this year were predicted to be the toughest with a four-corner fight, however, ABVP has outshone the others with huge margins.
The new office bearers who will be leading DUSU are Satender Awana as president, Sunny Dedha as vice-president, Anjali Rana as secretary and Chhattarpal Yadav as joint secretary.
Awana garnered 20,439 votes beating National Students’ Union of India’s (NSUI) Pradeep Vijayran by a margin of 6,327. The largest margin win was Dedha’s who beat CYSS’s Garima Rana by a margin of 7,570 votes. Rana defeated Amit Sehrawat of NSUI by 4,665 votes and Yadav scored 6,065 votes more than Deepak Choudhary of NSUI.
With massive credit being given to the last union and their volunteers, ABVP have also claimed that the campaign strategy adopted by Chatra Yuva Sangarsh Sansthan (CYSS) Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) student wing worked against CYSS and in their favour.
“There was so much involvement of Arvind Kejriwal in DUSU campaigning. Had they fought on issues and not on advertising gimmicks they would have been able to stand somewhere,” said Rohit Chahal, ABVP national secretary.
{{/usCountry}}“There was so much involvement of Arvind Kejriwal in DUSU campaigning. Had they fought on issues and not on advertising gimmicks they would have been able to stand somewhere,” said Rohit Chahal, ABVP national secretary.
{{/usCountry}}Senior BJP leaders like Amit Shah and union ministers Arun Jaitley, Dharmendra Pradhan among others congratulated the students’ wing on their victory.
CYSS have cut into the vote share of all other parties, especially left leaning All India Students Association and NSUI. CYSS had a vote share of 16 %.
Last year NSUI’s vote share was 27 percent this year it has gone down to 19 percent. Similarly, for AISA who was in the third position in all four posts last year their vote share has been reduced close to 13 percent from last year’s 21 percent. AISA slipped further but missed the second position of joint secretary by a mere 133 votes.
In this election, the total votes polled have also gone down to 2,24,078 and voting percentage stood at 43.3%.
This election is also important as apart from the post of vice-president, NSUI has retained all the second positions. Moreover, had there not been an internal rift within them, then they could have won the post of secretary. NSUI’s candidate had polled a total of 10,334 votes while its rebel candidate Amit Choudhary got 9,178 votes.
“The results are a sign that our party has managed to bounce back and shows the faith of the youth being reinforced in us,” said Roji M John, NSUI national president.