SFI Wins Student Council Election

In Ambedkar University, Aurangabad

Yogesh Khosre

THE Students Federation of India won the election to the secretary of the student council of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University, Aurangabad, held recently. Anilkumar Dhole of the SFI secured 25 out of 36 votes of the council. Three other student organisations, including those supported by political parties like NCP, RPI etc, had also contested the election. However, to their utter chagrin, not a single candidate secured more than four votes.

According to the Maharashtra Universities Act, 1994, all students are not allowed to participate in the elections. Department representatives are nominated to the council on the basis of their performance in the graduation examination and these representatives vote in the election for the secretary of the student council. Since the last seven years, the SFI had become active in the university. It started contesting elections since the last five years. In the first three elections, it had to suffer defeat. However, as the popularity of the SFI increased, it started winning the election since last academic year. This is the second consecutive victory of SFI.

From the time SFI started taking interest in the university activities, the communal and bourgeois political parties became alarmed and joined hands against it. They started threatening SFI workers and their followers. At times, even police intervened on their behalf. The SFI faced all these ordeals stiffly, resisted and countered them.

Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Maharathwada University is known as a rural university. Most of the students of this university are drawn from poverty-ridden rural areas. As such, they cannot bear even a slight hike in examination fees, registration charges, hostel fees etc. Shortage of books in the library, tough new conditions for the registration for Ph.D may also crush whatever feeble motivation they have for the higher learning. The SFI forcefully took up these issues and consistently fought for their solution, in the process earning for itself an image of a ‘principled fighter organisation’.