The Hindu : New Delhi News : Ujjain incident dominates DUSU poll campaign

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Sep 02, 2006

New Delhi

New Delhi

Ujjain incident dominates DUSU poll campaign

Staff Reporter

Student outfits appeal to the students to defeat these forces

NEW DELHI: The tragic incident in Ujjain that led to the death of Professor H.S. Sabharwal has dominated more than just the TV news channels. Student outfits contesting the upcoming Delhi University Students' Union polls here have also strongly condemned it.

"The way the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyathri Parishad (ABVP) activists behaved, as was shown on television channels, exposes their culture. They want to terrorise the system. They have bred this cult of hatred and violence. We hope that it will encourage students who have so far been sitting quietly to come out and defeat these forces," said Nadeem Javed, national president of the National Students' Union of India (NSUI), here on Friday.

The Students' Federation of India (SFI) has also strongly condemned the incident and appealed to the students to come out in large numbers to defeat these forces.

SFI organised a demonstration at Madhya Pradesh Bhavan along with the Delhi Teachers' Front here on Friday to demand stringent punishment for those responsible for Prof. Sabharwal's death.

"The killing has brought to the fore the criminalisation of politics of ABVP and NSUI once again," said SFI presidential candidate Mukut Sarma.

The "real" Left in the Delhi University Students' Union elections -- AISA -- released its manifesto here on Thursday. Aiming to provide an alternative to the "money and muscle-power" in the University, AISA has promised to resist any fee increase or commercialisation of the University.

"We want to create space for an alternate voice at Delhi University instead of groups that use muscle power and money. DUSU should be a platform for common students' struggles and not a launching pad for corrupt political leaders," said All-India Students' Association (AISA) activist Mona Das at a press conference.

ASIA has put up Suman for the DUSU president's post, Ashish Bharadwaj for vice-president, Manish Kumar for secretary and Pallavi Singh for joint secretary. The AISA activists condemned the recent incident that led to the death of a Prof. Sabharwal.

"Internal assessment has been turned into a major instrument of discrimination in Delhi University's colleges. There are large-scale irregularities in students' marks. We need a DUSU that will not allow the internal assessment to wreak havoc in the lives of students," said Suman.

The National Students' Congress has also been projecting itself as a viable option. The party has put up Syed Ata Abbas Naqvi for president, Prashant Kumar Jha for vice-president and Anuj Mittal for joint secretary.

Meanwhile, NSUI on Friday claimed that ABVP supporters locked up two of its candidates -- Amrita Dhawan and Tarun Tanwar -- in the canteen of Ram Lal Anand College (Evening) where they had gone to campaign. ABVP activists, however, claimed that the allegation was false.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

New Delhi

News Update

Stories in this Section