The defeat of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) nominees in the recently concluded Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) elections is being viewed as a wake-up call by the Bharatiya Janata Party, which had, only a few months ago, won the municipal corporation elections in the national capital.
The ABVP, which held all the four posts in DUSU, lost two posts to the Congress’ National Students’ Union of India (NSUI), that of president and vice president, while it won the secretary and joint secretary posts.
A senior minister tried to play down the loss in a television interview, attributing it to the presence of an independent candidate whose name was similar to the ABVP’s presidential nominee. However, the Sangh has decided to introspect on the adverse cause of the outcome. A local RSS functionary said: “Every election is important for us. Therefore, we need to know what went wrong this time.”
The DUSU election is considered significant given that the electorate is spread over all the seven parliamentary constituencies of the city and may be indicative of the overall political mood.
“The fear of joblessness, attack on the university space and hooliganism carried by the ABVP have resulted in disillusionment in the youth with the saffron party,” claimed Manindra Nath Thakur, a professor of political science at Jawaharlal Nehru University.
“Students will never tolerate hooliganism. Campuses are for study and free thinking. The kind of attack was launched on the teachers and students belong from different ideology group by the ABVP has come to an end,” said Abha Dev Habib, professor and Executive Council member of DU.