People's Democracy

THE alliance of the Students Federation of India (SFI) and All India Students Federation (AISF) has won a big victory in the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) elections this year. The alliance made a clean sweep of all the four central office-bearer posts and got an absolute majority in the Students Council. The elections to the JNUSU were held on November 12 and the results were declared by next day evening.

In the last year's election, the SFI-AISF alliance had won three office-bearer posts and lost the presidentship by just one vote.

Albeena Shakil of the SFI won the presidentship this year. She was vice president in the outgoing union. (It was the fifth straight victory for this very popular girl who had been a councillor earlier, joint secretary once and vice president twice.) The vice president post has been won by Rohit of the SFI; the AISF candidate Ginu Zacharia Oommen has won the general secretary post; and Parimal Maya Sudhakar of the SFI has won the joint secretaryship.

All the four posts were won by big margins, defeating the RSS-controlled Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) candidates. Other organisations like the pro-Congress NSUI and the ultra-leftist AISA suffered erosion in their support bases.

In the Students Council, the SFI-AISF alliance won 18 out of the 26 seats. The alliance won all the five councillor seats in the School of Social Sciences and all five in the School of Languages, Literature & Cultural Studies. It won 3 out of 5 councillor seats in the School of International Studies, 2 out of 3 in the School of Computers & Systems Sciences, and 3 out of 3 in the School of Life Sciences.

This washout of the ABVP in the elections represents a strong hatred among the JNU students for the policy of commercialisation and communalisation of education, being pursued by the BJP-led NDA government at the centre. JNU students strongly rebuffed the ABVP’s communal plank that declared, for instance, that the polls would decide whether one voted for Durgapuja or for Ramzan.

Out of the total 3,154 votes polled this year, the SFI-AISF presidential candidate won 1,606 votes, that is, more than 50 per cent. She defeated her ABVP rival by 589 votes, a record margin for this post that is always most keenly contested. The votes polled by other SFI-AISF candidates are given below, alongwith the winning margins in brackets:

Rohit for vice president post --- 1,564 (631);

Ginu Zacharia Oommen for general secretary post --- 1,311 (316); and

Parimal Maya Sudhakar for joint secretary post --- 1,363 (450) votes.

The central executive committee of the SFI has congratulated the students of the Jawaharlal Nehru University for reposing their firm faith in the SFI-AISF alliance. It said the results have sent a strong message that the Indian students community would not tolerate the anti-poor and anti-education policies of the BJP government or the attempts to polarise the students community along communal lines. JNU students were also not happy with the authorities’ plans aimed at commercialising education. These plans were solidly backed by the ABVP but were indicative of a "dangerous trend in the name of internal generation of funds," as the new JNUSU president put it.

The SFI-AISF alliance had, in its election manifesto, already identified a number of urgent issues facing the JNU students and is now set to take them up with the university authorities.