The Hindu : New Delhi News : New equations at JNU

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Thursday, Nov 16, 2006
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New Delhi

New equations at JNU

The dust has settled on the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus with the JNU Students' Union elections coming to a close. Time for the victors to gloat and those who missed out to sit back and take stock of what went wrong. While the Students' Federation of India (SFI) and the All India Students' Association (AISA) have managed to get the numbers for the elections, the Youth for Equality (YFE) has emerged very popular on campus.

With most of the YFE support restricted to the smaller schools, they still have to devise strategy to conquer the School of Social Sciences, School of International Studies and School of Languages, Literature and Culture according to the results.

The School of International Studies polled 608 votes, out of which Sonika Tyagi -- YFE's presidential candidate -- came closest to the winning margin but got only 101 votes. Similarly in the School of Social Sciences where 1,021 votes were cast, only 156 went to Sonika.

However, Dhananjay Tripathi -- the new JNUSU president -- got most of his votes from these three schools. Getting almost double of what the YFE presidential candidate got in each of these three schools, Tripathi secured a comfortable lead. While the winning score for president was 909, Awadesh Kumar of AISA lost by just 46 votes.

The race for the post of president might have been close, but AISA's Tyler Williams -- who is the new vice-president -- was miles ahead. The most popular of the candidates, he polled 1,076 votes. His closest competitor was Brundaban Mishra from YFE who got only 736.

It might be right to be Left on this campus, but for the Right the recent elections have been the worst for some time. Struggling to get a foothold again in the central panel, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) got only 432 votes for the post of president, which was contested by Amit Singh. The presidential candidate of the National Students' Union of India (NSUI), which dominates the scene elsewhere in town, got only 112 votes.

With plenty of work ahead of them, all the parties will have to find a way to deal with a new force on campus -- YFE.

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It is the biggest challenge facing women. And to empower women to take the right decision, the Women's Development Cell (WDC) of Miranda House and the Campaign Against Pre-Birth Elimination of Females (CAPF) have decided to spread the message in a different way.

Looking at the issue colourfully, "Nirali'', an exhibition of paintings on the rights of the girl child, has been put up at the Fine Arts Academy for Arts and Literature at Siri Fort. Armed with brushes and a canvas, students from various schools and colleges came together to make a point. Noted artist Arpana Caur did the final selection of the paintings. The exhibition will be on view till November 16.

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Aligarh Muslim University is doing its bit with the tigers. The chairman of the Department of Wild Life, Jamal Ahmad Khan, has been nominated as a member of the newly constituted National Tiger Conservation Authority under the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests.

Dr. Jamal is one of the eight non-official experts on this Committee. The Authority is a statutory decision-making body empowered to act for tiger conservation.

The Tiger Task Force constituted by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had recommended conversion of Project Tiger into a Statutory Authority for effective implementation and monitoring of tiger conservation initiatives.

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"Gandhigiri" might be inspiring more than a few people but this is a chance to look at his legacy seriously. The Gandhi Studies Centre of Jamia Millia Islamia organised a three-day lecture series by Ram Chandra Gandhi beginning this Wednesday. Prof. Gandhi will explore different themes during the course of his lectures including the Partition of India and the political displacement of inclusive spirituality and the importance of Gandhi's inter-faith in the present day.

-- Mandira Nayar

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