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The Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus buzzed with drums, chants, and campaign songs on Tuesday as students turned out in large numbers to elect their new union leaders. The university recorded a 67% voter turnout in the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union (JNUSU) elections, slightly lower than the 68.3% registered in the April polls earlier this year. Counting of votes began on Tuesday night and will continue on Wednesday, with final results expected on Thursday. Twenty candidates are in the fray for the four key central panel posts – president, vice-president, general secretary, and joint secretary – while 42 councillor seats are being contested across different schools. Around 9,043 students were eligible to vote this year. Voting took place in two batches, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2.30 p.m. to 5 p.m., but long queues kept the process going until nearly 6 p.m. Ideological battles Unlike the previous election, when the Left bloc had split, the Students’ Federation of India (SFI), All India Students’ Association (AISA), and Democratic Students’ Federation (DSF) have come together under the banner of Left Unity to ensure the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) “stays out of the union”. The ABVP has expressed confidence in improving its tally, while the Congress-backed National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) pitched itself as an “alternative to the Left-Right binary” that dominates campus politics. As witnessed in the presidential debate, students appeared largely divided between the Left and the ABVP. In a statement on polling day, the Left Unity accused the ABVP of trying to “confuse and divide Left voters”. Aishe Ghosh, former JNUSU president from SFI, alleged that the ABVP was “attempting to divide progressive voters by distributing chits with names of rival candidates”. ‘Red terror in JNU’ The ABVP, in turn, accused the Left of perpetuating “red terror in JNU”. On the eve of polling, it posted on social media, “Communists in JNU are no different from Naxals of Sukma, Dantewada or Gadchiroli.” A day earlier, the ABVP highlighted its achievement of setting up a railway reservation counter on campus, a promise from its previous manifesto, claiming it believes in “the politics of action, not promises”. Outgoing JNUSU president Nitish Kumar said, “I won’t say the ABVP will lose, but the BJP will because ABVP acts as a BJP agent on this campus. We have defeated them for years, and we will again.” The ABVP, however, maintained that it was headed for a “landslide victory”.
