Cong MLA, NSUI chief lock horns over wing’s rout in students’ polls

Jaipur: Even as NSUI’s poor show in the recently concluded students’ union elections in Rajasthan remains a topic of debate in the ruling Congress, a war of words has erupted between Congress MLA from Osian, Divya Maderna, and NSUI state president Abhishek Chaudhary over the issue.
Maderna on Friday took potshots at NSUI state president Abhishek Chaudhary for the Congress student wing’s failure to win a single presidential post in government-run universities across the state in these polls. Even as Chaudhary had blamed it on the rebels, calling them “Jaichand,” Maderna said in a tweet that it was Chaudhary who had himself rebelled against the NSUI presidential candidate in the Rajasthan University polls in 2014.
She said the young leaders and newcomers should learn from Rahul Gandhi, who had resigned as Congress president on moral grounds taking responsibility for the 2019 Lok Sabha election results.
The MLA said the main reason behind NSUI’s defeat was deserving candidates not being given tickets and the delay in ticket distribution changing the equations among the aspirants.
“We have never been able to cross the 100 mark after 1998,” she said in another tweet, pointing at Congress’s performance in Assembly polls.
Speaking to TOI, Chaudhary said Maderna herself had put up a rebel presidential candidate in Babdi College in Jodhpur, who bagged only 40 votes while the official NSUI candidate was defeated by 14 votes. He said NSUI’s electoral debacle in the recent elections was due to sabotage from within and not because of ABVP. “In Rajasthan University, a Congress minister's daughter contested as a rebel,” he said.
Chaudhary also claimed the MLA’s charges were prompted by her own political insecurity. “Divya Maderna and I belong to the same Phalodi tehsil and both are from the same community. She is feeling insecure due to my political growth,” he alleged.