Jawaharlal Nehru University elections are once again swept by the United left comprising of All India Students’ Association, Democratic Students Federation and Students Federation of India. While the ABVP Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad aligned RSS has emerged as the second biggest force in the campus and the BAPSA the Birsa Ambedkar Phule Students Association has stood at third. JNU is the University with a Unique culture of politics that ensures the absolute freedom of speech to every single individual. This explains that how a physically challenged student Mohammed Farooque has managed to contest this year’s election and take on all the established parties in the fray and pull an impressive 419 votes.
JNU is the University that has survived on the Left from decades because of the ideologies. And the present Hindutva wave across India has come up with new ideological challenges and opportunities for the Universities left campus. Out of the 4,620 votes around 1,506 votes have secured by the AISA president’s post-Geeta Kumari who leaves behind the Nidhi Tripathi of ABVP with around 460 votes. And the vice-president post secured by Simone Zoya Khan with 1,876 votes. While SFI’s Duggirala Srikrishna secured 2,082 votes and get elected as the general secretary. He also got the highest voting percentage out of all the central panel candidates of the University. DSF’s Shubhanshu Singh secured the post of joint secretary with 1,755 votes.
Once again JNU elections led Left Unity with United left victory who got absolute majority mandate on the campus. However, these results and the continued dominance of Left in the University explained the JNU politics. As compared to the last year, the 1200 votes of ABVP went down this year.
United Left panel in JNU elections: Geeta Kumari, Simone Zoya Khan, Duggirala Srikrishna, Shubhanshu Singh. Victory is theirs tonight. #Reds pic.twitter.com/N2cGhlIuEJ
— Vijay Prashad (@vijayprashad) September 9, 2017
