Congress retains campus; BJP up narrowly

By Lakshmi Balakrishnan

NEW DELHI, SEPT. 8. It is one down from last year's complete sweep for the Congress in the Delhi University Students' Union (DUSU) elections now, with the National Students' Union of India (NSUI) winning three of the four key posts on Saturday.

While the Congress-affiliated NSUI bagged the post of DUSU President, Secretary and Joint Secretary, the BJP-baked Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) managed to improve upon its last year's score of zero by wresting the post of Vice-President.

NSUI's presidential candidate, Neetu Verma, won hands down, becoming the first student to ever win three DUSU elections in a row. NSUI's star attraction over the last three years, Ms. Verma defeated ABVP's Pragati Badhwar by over 7,000 votes.

For ABVP, it seems a case of going by the numerical order from zero to one. ABVP's only saving grace, Nakul Bharadwaj, won the Vice-President's post by 2,714 votes, giving his party at least a reason to smile, if not celebrate.

The last-minute controversy over NSUI's candidate for Secretary, Vikas Shoukeen's use of ``fake certificates'' for admission fell flat too, though the margin was comparatively less with Shoukeen polling 9,813 votes against 7,317 of ABVP's Suresh Mann.

The NSUI candidate for Joint Secretary, Rohit Chaudhary, won by a narrow margin, too -- 1,871 votes -- over ABVP's Vivek Kumar Bidhuri. Interestingly, NSUI's rebel candidate Amit Kaushik, who stood for the posts of Vice-President as well as Joint Secretary, seemed to have walked off with a chunk of NSUI's votes, polling 2,430 votes for the post of Vice-President and 3780 for Joint Secretary.

ABVP's new campaign tactics seemed to have failed miserably, be it the poster propaganda that it picked up from NSUI or the controversy over the secretarial candidate Vikas Shoukeen.

The counting of votes -- polled on Friday -- started at 8-30 a.m. on Saturday amid heavy security and the results were announced at around 12-30 p.m. The Chief Election Officer, Prof. Rajiv Khanna, put the total turnout at a low 26,000 votes, with more than 1,600 votes ``invalid''.

Despite its victory, NSUI blamed the poor turnout for the loss of the Secretary seat. In fact, even ABVP blamed the karamchari strike and the low turnout for its dismal performance. ``A number of students could not vote in most colleges. It obviously affected our votes too. In any case, we are hoping that the Vice- Chancellor will take action against Vikas Shoukeen,'' an ABVP spokesperson said.

But NSUI brushed aside ABVP's reasoning as lame excuses. ``I would have won by a bigger margin had more students managed to get their I-Cards and come out to vote. But nevertheless, it has been a good win,'' said Ms.Verma, the newly-elected DUSU President.

Describing NSUI's win as ``a reflection of the changing trend of the younger generation towards the Congress'', the Congress Working Committee member, Mr. Mukul Wasnik, said the results are ``an indication of things to come. ''

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