By IANS,
New Delhi : The Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union (JNUSU) elections will take place here Friday with around 30 candidates fighting for the posts of president, vice-president, general secretary and joint secretary. The results will be out by Saturday.
Considered to be a bastion of the Left, the political equations have changed this time round.
The Student Federation of India (SFI), which is backed by the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), was dissolved after a section openly criticised the CPI-M for supporting Pranab Mukherjee’s candidature in the presidential poll.
As a result, the newly-constituted SFI lost their long-term ally — the Communist Party of India (CPI)-backed All India Student Federation (AISF) — who have entered into an alliance with the erstwhile SFI now called the SFI-JNU.
The alliance has fielded V. Lenin Kumar for president, Rahul Kumar Maurya for vice-president, Kunwar Sudhanshu Lal for general secretary and Ruchira Sen for joint secretary.
However, the arch rival for both the outfits continues to be the All India Students’ Association (AISA) which bagged all the four posts in the last elections.
The AISA has fielded Om Prasad for president, while Minakshi Buragohain would be contesting for the post of vice-president. Shakeel Anjum is the candidate for general secretary and Piyush Raj for secretary.
The Congress-backed National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) has fielded Iqbal Singh for president and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)-backed Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad has fielded Rashmini Koparkar for president.
The JNUSU elections will take place for the second time this year after the interim union was dissolved July 30 when the new session began.
Elections were held March 1, 2012, after a gap of over four years. The Supreme Court had suspended the JNUSU elections of 2008, citing violations of the Lyngdoh Committee recommendations on student union polls.
In the 2007 elections, too, AISA had won all the four JNUSU posts.