Meanwhile, the Congress-backed National Students Union of India’s (NSUI) two-year drought in the central panel ended with their Mohit Garid winning the joint-secretary post.
Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad’s have bagged the posts of president, vice-president and secretary. Amit Tanwar is the new DUSU president; Priyanka Chabri and Ankit Sangwan were elected vice-president and secretary, respectively. Mohit Garid of the NSUI won the joint-secretary post.
“The result shows how popular ABVP is among the students. It is the continuous efforts and works that the ABVP has done in the past three years. We have always put the student community first. I, as the president, will continue with the pro-student work that our organisation has done from its inception,” said Amit Tanwar, the president designate of DUSU.
In a way, the result is a slight setback for the ABVP and a major gain for the NSUI. AVBP had in 2014 and 2015 swept all the four posts with all the students winning with huge margin of votes.
This time, not only has the NSUI won the post of the joint-secretary but also gave a tough competition to the winning ABVP candidates in every post. The difference of votes for the post of vice-president is only 2,455 and for the secretary is a mere 1,683 votes.
Earlier, in the morning when the results were declared, the NSUI welcomed it and congratulated the wining candidates. However, later in the day, NSUI accused the election office of mismanaging elections and demanded re-elections. They started a relay hunger strike at the Faculty of Arts.
“There cannot be a difference of 5,000 votes for the presidential post. This is the result of using faulty voting machines. There were reports that votes were going to the ABVP candidates in spite of voting for our presidential candidates,” said Nigam Bhandari, general secretary of NSUI. Senior Congress leaders also joined the protesting NSUI activists at the venue.
Meanwhile, the Left-inclined All India Students’ Union also performed well in the election. In a marked improvement from last year’s performance, AISA’s candidates captured third position in almost all the posts.