By Siddhant Mohan, TwoCircles.net
Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) has yet again lost in students union elections, and this time in Varanasi’s Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapeeth.
The election which was held today resulted in a win of candidates who were either independent or came from National Students Union of India (NSUI).
The President post of the university went to Rahul Dubey, who contested as an independent candidate. Rahul was associated with Samajwadi Chhatra Sabha (SCS), the student wing of Samajwadi Party. But this year, he resigned from SCS and contested as an independent candidate and registered a win with 2,365 votes against ABVP candidate Valmiki Upadhyay and Varun Yadav of NSUI-SCS alliance. The winning margin was set by a thousand votes.
Roshan Kumar, a candidate from NSUI and SCS alliance, successfully bagged the vice-president post of the university, defeating Dayashankar Yadav of ABVP. Roshan Kumar also registered the maximum vote count of 3,185 and defeated his closest opponent by around 1,500 votes.
Moreover, Anil Yadav, again an independent candidate, defeated panellists from ABVP (Ankita Singh) and NSUI-SCS (Bipin Yadav), and won the general secretary post with a winning margin of 1,100 votes, bagging 2,842 voters to himself.
NSUI-SCS candidate Ravi Pratap Singh who won the library secretary post after he defeated ABVP’s Sarvesh Pathak with more than 500 votes.
The union at this key university had no dominance of any particular political group. It has been fought between NSUI and ABVP for many years. But since BJP came to the centre in 2014, ABVP grew its base and Ayushi Shrimali became the president of Union.
State minister for railways Manoj Sinha had been visiting the campus very frequently, a visit which was rumoured to strengthen the ABVP on the campus. However, last year’s union election results were more favourable to SCS.
Out of the total 8,133 voters of the university, 4,725 (about 58%) voters registered their votes.
The election day resulted in a heavy violence between students groups after ABVP supporters allegedly assaulted few independent candidate’s supporters. Police had to intervene and apprehended several students in the same matter.