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JNU painted red again

Staff Reporter

Left outfits bag all the four students' union posts

ROMPING HOME: AISA's Mona Das won the presidential post for the second consecutive year.

NEW DELHI: The curtain finally came down on the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union (JNUSU) elections on Saturday with the Left once again sweeping all four central panel seats.

In a complete repeat of last year's results, All India Students' Association's Mona Das won the presidential post for the second year in a row, while the Students' Federation of India (SFI)-All India Students' Federation (AISF) alliance regained the rest of the three central panel post.

With the performance of the Right wing showing a further dip, the results indicated not just the dominance of the red flag at JNU but also the resurgence of the Left radical wing.

The fight was a rather close one for the top two posts with the victory being on small margins. Closely fought, the battle for the presidential post saw Mona Das poll 1,049 votes to beat nearest rival Sona Mitra by a margin of just 52 votes.

The fight was even tighter for the post of vice-president, with AISA's Kanika Singh and SFI's Dhananjay Tripathi being neck to neck through the counting of votes. But in the end, Kanika Singh fell short of 25 votes, polling only 905 votes against 930 of Dhananjay Tripathi.

There may have been hiccups in the SFI-AISF alliance, but the latter managed to once again win the only seat that they were allotted as part of the partnership by clinching the general secretary's seat.

Fauzan Abrar of AISF polled 913 votes, beating AISA's Awadesh Kumar by 180 votes.

In the race for the joint secretary's post, SFI's Arani Sinha polled 960 votes beating Sandeep, who polled 711, by the highest margin of this election of 249 votes.

"We are happy that the student community once again expressed its faith in AISA's leadership abilities. Our performance has improved considerably this year and we believe it is because AISA started a Left debate on the campus that the communal forces have been pushed to the third position this time around," said the newly elected JNUSU president Mona Das.

With the counting stretching across Friday night, supporters pitched outside the counting centre, preferring to sacrifice a night's sleep rather and wait. While accepting there had been a delay in the counting process, Election Committee chairman Netaji Abhinandan said although the counting had taken more time than expected, "the aim of conducting the elections and the counting process in a peaceful environment had been achieved".

Speaking of her immediate priorities, Mona Das said: "Once we take over, the first issue to be taken up would be an agitation against the attack on GSCASH made by the JNU administration. We will present it before the counsel and see what decision is taken. Apart from that, we will be preparing a charter of demands on other issues such as extending financial assistance."

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