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In a close race with the ABVP, Left Unity came out on top in the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union elections on Thursday winning all four central posts while reaffirming its ideological dominance on campus politics. Left Unity won the four main panel positions of president, vice-president, general secretary, and joint secretary. Aditi Mishra of Left Unity was elected JNUSU president with 1,937 votes defeating ABVP candidate Vikas Patel, who secured 1,488 votes. For vice-president, Left Unity candidate K Gopika Babu won with 3,101 votes, delivering a big defeat to the ABVP’s Tanya Kumari at 1,787 votes. Left Unity’s Sunil Yadav (2,005 votes) triumphed in a close contest for the post of general secretary with a winning margin of merely 24, defeating Rajeshwar Kant Dubey of the ABVP, who got 1,981 votes. Danish Ali from Left Unity defeated the ABVP’s Anuj Damara to win the joint secretary post with 2,083 votes. Left Unity is an alliance of the All India Students’ Association (AISA), Students’ Federation of India (SFI) and Democratic Students’ Federation (DSF). Newly elected president Aditi Mishra and vice-president K Gopika Babu belong to the SFI, while Sunil Yadav is from the DSF and Danish Ali from the AISA. This year, around 9,043 students were eligible to vote with the polls recording a 67 percent turnout, slightly lower than the previous election’s 70 percent. The campus saw vibrant participation with students queuing up outside hostels and schools amid chants, drumbeats and campaign songs. Despite being a close contest, the result is a setback for the ABVP that had made a comeback to the JNUSU central panel last year when Vaibhav Meena won the joint secretary’s post — it was the RSS-backed outfit’s first victory in a decade. Earlier, Saurabh Sharma’s win in 2015 had ended a 14-year drought for the right-wing organisation. Before that, the ABVP’s only presidential victory dates back to 2000-01, when Sandeep Mahapatra broke through the Left’s dominance. With this year’s outcome, the Left Unity has reasserted its political dominance continuing its long tradition of leadership in the JNU — a campus often seen as a cradle of debate, dissent and student activism. (With PTI inputs)
