In a historic win, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) won the president’s post in Panjab University Campus Students' Council (PUCSC) elections for the first time in the varsity’s history.
ABVP candidate Gaurav Veer Sohal, who comes from Punjab, won by a significant margin of 488 votes, securing 3,148 votes against Sumit Sharma of Student Front, a local outfit, who secured 2,660 votes. There were a total of eight candidates in the fray for the top post.
The other three main posts were won by three different outfits.
This is the first time that ABVP, student wing of the RSS under the same umbrella as the BJP, has won the president’s seat since PU started holding direct elections for the student office-bearers in 1977.
For long periods, student wings of national-level organisations were not active on the PU campus, or played a minor role, as home-grown outfits dominated. That has changed over the past decade or so.
Other student wings of national parties — the National Students' Union of India (NSUI) of the Congress; the Association of Students for Alternative Politics (ASAP), of Punjab's ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP); and the Students Organization of India (SOI) of the Shiromani Akali Dal — performed poorly this time. Last year the election was won by a rebel from the NSUI. Of these, AAP’s student wing had won in 2022.
{{/usCountry}}Other student wings of national parties — the National Students' Union of India (NSUI) of the Congress; the Association of Students for Alternative Politics (ASAP), of Punjab's ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP); and the Students Organization of India (SOI) of the Shiromani Akali Dal — performed poorly this time. Last year the election was won by a rebel from the NSUI. Of these, AAP’s student wing had won in 2022.
{{/usCountry}}PU elections are closely watched by analysts as student council polls do not take place inside Punjab and Haryana proper, but only in their common capital Chandigarh, which is a union territory.
As for the other presidential candidates, Parabhjot Singh Gill of the NSUI secured 1,359 votes and Mankirat Singh Mann of the ASAP secured 1,184 votes.
Sohal had announced an alliance with the Indian National Students Organisation (INSO) and Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA), the latter a newly formed party by rebel NSUI candidates. Interestingly, only Sohal was able to win from the alliance, while all the other candidates lost.
Sohal had done his LLM from UILS which he joined in 2023. He has been a research scholar with the Department of Laws from this year onwards.
Who won other posts?
For the post of vice president, Ashmeet Singh of Sath party won. Sath was last in the student council in 2023 when Ranmeekjot Kaur won the post of vice president. However, she was removed from the party in around a month and remained an independent candidate since then.
For the post of general secretary, Abhishek Dagar of the homegrown Students Organisation of Panjab University (SOPU) secured 3,438 votes, winning with a wide margin of 722 votes against Vishesh Anand Dhaka of Indian National Students Organisation (INSO). SOPU has come again in the student council for the first time since 2012 when they had the full council.
For the post of joint secretary, Mohit Manderana, a rebel from NSUI, won by a margin of 318 votes. Manderana was a rebel backed by former NSUI Chandigarh president Sikander Boora and fought independently.
In all, 9,535 votes of total 16,184 votes were polled in the elections, with a voting percentage of 58.9%. This is much lower than 66.6% last year, but reasonably high considering the heavy rain in the PU campus on Wednesday morning.