Author: UNI
Publication: Indian
Express
Date: November 19, 2000
The prestigious Jawaharlal
Nehru University, long considered a red bastion, has gone the saffron way
this year with the BJP-affiliated ABVP bagging the coveted post of the
JNU students union president, but the left party sympathisers say their
vote base is intact.
In a verdict that turned
out to be historic for a number of reasons, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi
Parishad's Sandeep Mahapatra won the race for the president by a wafer-thin
majority of only one vote against Students Federation of India's Vijoo
Krishnan last night.
This is the first time
that the ABVP, which has been making inroads into the JNU in recent years,
has won the post of the president.
Mr Krishnan, a joint
candidate of the SFI and the All India Students Federation, won 955 votes
while Mr Mahapatra bagged 956.
While PHD scholar Nilanjana
Singh of the school of social sciences, who campaigned for the ABVP candidate,
said the verdict showed the students' desire for change, Prof Kamal Chenoy
of the school of international studies disagrees.
According to Mr Chenoy,
the main reason for the defeat of the SFI-AISF candidate was the split
in the SFI on the eve of the elections. Seventy SFI members, including
the outgoing JNUSU president Nasir Hussein, parted ways with the group
on the eve of the polls and backed the presidential nominee of the CPI
(ML)-backed All India Students Union (AISA), who bagged 690 votes.
''The results show that
taken together, the left parties won 60 per cent of the votes. This
shows that their vote base is intact. The results should be an eye
opener for the secular vote that any split in their ranks would benefit
their rivals. Efforts should be made to bring back those who have
left the SFI,'' he added.
While the debate goes
on in the sprawling JNU campus about the wafer-thin defeat of the SFI-AISF
presidential candidate, there is no disputing the verdict. The Left
party candidate has conceded defeat and observers fear no disturbance.
''JNU has a tradition
of reconciliation and a mature polity built upon working with all sorts
of combinations,'' said Prof B Viveknandan of the Centre for American and
Euro Studies.
While the ABVP's Makhan
Saikia bagged the post of joint secretary, SFI's Albeena Shakeel is the
new JNUSU vice-president and AISF's Mathi Anand is general secretary.
