People's Democracy

(Weekly Organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)

 Vol. XXVI

No. 33

August 25,2002

HIMACHAL UNIVERSITY POLLS

SFI's Clean Sweep

Pammy Sharma

AS we go to press, we receive the news that Students Federation of India (SFI) has swept the elections to the Student Central Association (as student unions are called) in Himachal Pradesh. SFI has scored a historic victory in the Himachal University campus winning all the four major posts with massive margins. It has also won 23 departmental representatives (councillors) out of the total 35 posts.

Kuldeep Bhardwaj was elected president with a margin of 243 votes, Trilok was elected as vice president with a margin of 230 votes, Sudhir Dutta was elected as general secretary with a record margin of 338 votes and Bhushan was elected joint secretary with a margin of 255 votes. It must be pointed out that these are the largest ever margins scored by winning candidates in the history of the Himachal Pradesh University. The ABVP, which had won all the four posts last year, failed to even open its account this time.

Frustrated by the election results, ABVP activists attacked SFI supporters just outside campus as they were proceeding to participate in the victory march. The university authorities reacted by declaring that the University would remain closed for two days.

The elections to the student unions were held across the state on August 20 and the counting was done later in the evening. The results are still awaited from some of the colleges in the remote areas and some private colleges. The statewide results and trends indicate that SFI has consolidated its performance across the state.

The students across the state and particularly in the Himachal Pradesh University campus voted comprehensively and decisively for forces they identified would struggle for their rights. It needs to be remembered here that the elections to the student unions were restored in the state after a six year long persistent struggle by SFI , at a time when its top state leadership had been put behind the bars on a false and fabricated case.

The historic victory on the University campus comes in the backdrop of attempts by the BJP state government to vitiate the academic atmosphere in the campuses by introducing unscientific subjects in the curriculum, appointment of its Sangh Parivar activists and sympathizers to teaching and non-teaching posts, privatisation, commercialisation and saffronisation of education.

The state secretary of SFI, Manoj Chandel while thanking the student community of the state has said that SFI would continue its struggle for better educational facilities, higher budgetary allocations for education and oppose saffronisation and privatisation of education and work ceaselessly to build a strong democratic and secular student movement.