The recent win of the National Students Union of India (NSUI) the student wing of the Congress, on all the four seats of the Sampurnanand Sanskrit Vishwavidyalaya does not have relevance beyond the student politics of the Varanasi based university.
In the 2018-19 session, all four seats (president, vice president, General Secretary and Library Secretary) were with the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP)- the student wing of the BJP. In the previous session they were equally split between the ABVP and the NSUI while in 2016, the NSUI had all for seats in its corner.
The newly elected President of the Students Union, Shivam Shukla says that the last election was won by the ABVP because of external factors. “Their campaign line was that since there was a BJP government at both the state and the centre, they would have no difficulty in getting central status for the university and increase in allocation of funds. They also promised facilities like an e-library. But nothing happened”, said Shukla who polled 764 of the 991 votes polled and terms his victory as ‘one-sided’.
Later in the day he, with a delegation of students, was scheduled to meet Congress General Secretary and UP Incharge Priyanka Gandhi Vadra who had tweeted about the victory and congratulated the students.
Chakrapani Ojha, a member of the ABVP who had gained fame of late for leading the band of students opposing the appointment of Dr Firoze Khan to the Sanskrit Vidya Dharma Vijnan Sankaya (Sanskrit Faculty) says that the NSUI victory meant little given the poor voter turnout (slightly over half the eligible voters) “It is however to the NSUI’s credit that it has maintained its reach among the students and supported their demands. The body has been actively raising student demands. Whether or not these have been met is another matter but they have won the game of perception.”
Vijay Pratap, state organization secretary of the ABVP, says that BJP's student wing has seen multiple victories in the recent past. “We won in Sonbhadra and Mirzapur recently but Varanasi gets far more attention. The VC announced the elections much after the scheduled date and the whole process was over in three days. Attendance is low in winters and hence voter turnout was also poor”, Pratap told THE WEEK
He also pointed out that the ABVP, as per its mandate has been involved in several activities such as building support for the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and hence did not have enough time to give to the election.
