Shikshan Manch’s victory surprises NU academic circles

Nagpur: The victory of Shikshan Manch in Nagpur University’s senate elections has surprised the academic circles, which were expecting a clean sweep for the mega alliance of Young Teachers’ Association (YTA), Secular Panel (SP), Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Teachers Association and Vidyapeeth Sangram Parishad.
According to academics who are part of NU politics for over two to three decades, a big number of voters from arts, commerce and engineering and science faculties shifted loyalties to Manch backed by BJP and RSS.
For the last decade or so, the commerce and management faculties have been the stronghold for YTA leader and senior academician Baban Taywade while engineering and science faculties for SP led by MLC Abhijit Wanjari. Both Taywade and Wanjari, who are from Congress party, run a group of colleges employing many teachers who were expected to vote for their alliance.
Both heavyweights in university’s politics for over the years were also members on all statutory bodies like senate and management council. They enjoyed support of biggies in NU politics, including former engineering dean Dinesh Agrawal and former registrar Puran Meshram. On the basis of their strongholds in respective faculties, both SP and YTA dominated the last two elections of 2011 and 2017 (Polls held two years late due to implementation of new Maharashtra Public Universities Act, 2016).
On the other hand, Manch led by president Kalpana Pande and general secretary Satish Chafle was a relatively new player in the field. They even do not have big names like Taywade, Wanjari, and others. Still, it managed to pull off a coup of sorts this time. In 2017 polls, Manch won seven seats while SP clinched 12 and YTA 11. However, Manch office bearers used their clout to ensure that maximum number of their candidates were nominated by chancellor and vice chancellor on all statutory bodies.
Academics predicted that Manch would dominate the nominations by chancellor BS Koshyari and VC Subhash Chaudhari this time as well, and would emerge stronger than the last senate term.
“The YTA, SP and other parties would have to fight very hard in the forthcoming graduates’ constituency polls on December 11, where another BJP backed organization ABVP has been holding sway for the last many years. In 2017, it had managed to win six out of 10 seats and is hoping to better its tally. The alliance partners need to redraw their strategies to overcome the stiff challenge thrown by RSS backed outfits. They cannot take anything lightly after senate polls drubbing,” they said.