Parties kick off DUSU poll campaign with campus rallies
New Delhi: Following the alliance of CYSS-AISA, the DUSU election has turned into a triangular battle as AISA- CYSS has been trying to grab freshers' votes with its poll campaign "Vote for Change" whereas ABVP's poll plank is "Green and Clean campus, Safe women campus". NSUI's poll theme is the 'Institute of Eminence' tag for Delhi University.
Earlier, AISA had scored over the rest after it led a successful sit-in at Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's residence until he agreed to extend student bus passes to air-conditioned public buses, too.
NSUI is leaving the campaign theme on campus-specific issues such as transportation and hostels to its college units, focusing more on aspirational topics like the eminence tag, and getting senior Congress women leaders to mentor women students.
Like NSUI and ABVP, women's security is a poll plank for the AISA-CYSS alliance. AISA, which opposes CCTV cameras and police pickets on campuses, included these demands of the CYSS in their joint manifesto released on Saturday.
AISA national president Sucheta De told reporters CCTVs and pickets would be used to curb hooliganism and not for moral policing. "Students are willing to join protests for simple things. We spend hundreds on autos, as there isn't a bus from the campus to the Metro. Paying-guest accommodations fleece us in the absence of hostels or rent control. If anyone fights for it, they will win hands down," said campaigning students at the north campus.
While the NSUI credits itself with re-establishing peace on the campus, and even publishing a students magazine - earlier unheard of in DU, which is known for its money and muscle politics - there are fears that the CYSS-AISA alliance may eat into its vote share and give ABVP a 2015-like victory of all the four main posts - president, vice-president, secretary and joint secretary.
Ruchi Gupta, NSUI's national in-charge, has changed the student wing's strategy of throwing lavish pre-poll parties into an issue-based campaign and an ideological challenge to the ABVP.
"We break it down for them - that if Delhi University had been given Rs 1,000 crore (in five years) that comes with the eminence tag, that works out to Rs 75,000 per student - there wouldn't be fee hikes, and it would bring better labs and libraries. Instead of DU, which admits students who score above 95 per cent, Jio University, which doesn't exist (yet), gets this tag," Gupta told reporters. ABVP is focusing on local issues, said an ABVP member.
"We're demanding a 24x7 library and we will end the discrepancy in diet rates for sportspersons for whom we want at least Rs 40 to Rs 50 per day. A major campaign we have planned is one course, one fee," he further added.
