Congress fortifying National Students Union of India in Tamil Nadu to regain lost ground

CHENNAI: After decades, the students’ wing of Congress has in the recent weeks conducted public protests in Tamil Nadu to make its presence felt. In the last two weeks, the members staged protests in 14 districts over the alleged irregularities in purchase of Rafale fighter jets for the air force. The last time the student's wing, National Students Union of India, staged a demonstration was in 1990 to highlight the services of Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in Sri Lanka.

Party insiders say that the recent protests were an attempt to strengthen the grand old party as it fears that its dominant ally in Tamil Nadu, DMK, is planning to allocate only a meagre number of seats to it in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

M Marikumar, State vice president of the student's wing, told Express, “We have enrolled more than 10,000 students across the State in a foolproof manner by verifying their college identity card, Aadhaar and SSLC mark sheet. We have set an age limit of 27 for the members. We are able to enrol such a large number of members even though our party is not in power for the last five decades in the State. We have also conducted fair elections for the various posts within the wing.”

The party high command recently gave permission for the student's wing to conduct demonstrations in Tamil Nadu over the ‘Rafale scam’ to create awareness among the participants and first time voters.

“Our district-level functionaries were able to easily mobilise 700 to 1000 students in each district and this has come to us as a moral support. We will complete the demonstrations in other districts in the next 10 days,” he said.