Najeeb’s mother Fatima Nafees at a march. (Representational image)
The disappearance of JNU student Najeeb Ahmad, seat cut in MPhil and PhD courses and cases of “mob lynching in the name of gau raksha” are some of the issues on which the JNU student union elections will be fought on September 8 this year.
With candidates announced on Wednesday, the election promises to be interesting for many reasons. All organisations have fielded women candidates for the post of president. The only two men in the fray are contesting independently.
Three major Left organisations on the campus — AISA, SFI and DSF — have come together to defeat the ABVP under the banner of ‘Left Unity’. They have fielded Geeta Kumari (AISA) for president, Simone Zoya Khan (AISA) for vice-president, Duggirala Srikrishna (SFI) for general secretary and Shubhanshu Singh (DSF) for joint secretary.
Interestingly, DSF was formed after some members of the SFI were expelled in 2012 by the CPI(M) — the parent party — over publicly taking an opposing view to the party’s position on supporting Pranab Mukherjee as President. It is the first time since then that the two organisations are coming together. Last year, the Left Unity panel only had AISA and SFI candidates.
Launching an attack on the vice-chancellor, Kumari said, “There is an attack on JNU because it provides affordable education. The V-C is trying to finish off the campus at the policy level. This year, 1,000 students (who were deprived of a seat because of the seat-cut) will not be able to participate in the elections,” she said.
However, the AISF, to which former JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar belongs, is not part of the alliance and will contest on two posts. The party has fielded Aparajitha Raja, daughter of senior CPI leader D Raja, as its presidential candidate and Md Mahdi Hassan for the post of joint secretary. “We still consider other Left organisations as our fraternal organisations, but we have to keep in mind the objective reality of the campus. In the last one year, there have been many lapses (by JNUSU). Our democratic spaces have shrunk. The administrative block, which was a space for struggle, has become a cage,” said Aparajitha Raja.
Sources in the Left Unity panel, however, said the alliance with the AISF could not materialise because Raja was “adamant” on the post of president, which the panel did not approve of since the AISF does not have a large enough presence in the campus.
The Ambedkarite organisation, BAPSA, which had emerged as a contender last year, has also fielded a full panel with Shabana Ali as its presidential candidate. The NSUI has field Vrishnika Singh for the post of president.
The ABVP, too, has fielded a woman — Nidhi Tripathi — as its presidential candidate. “We are confident that the way nationalistic thought is being accepted all over the country, in JNU, too, such thought will be accepted. The anti-nationals will be defeated,” said Saurabh Sharma of the ABVP.
