Mumbai
Updated : Oct 31, 2014, 06:00 AM IST
The incoming Bharatiya Janata Party-led state government should reinstate the practice of holding student body elections in state colleges, says the BJP's student wing.
The students' wing will present its demand to Devendra Fadnavis after he has settled in as chief minister. The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) is emboldened by the fact that Fadnavis and incoming party chief Chandrakant Patil were both ABVP members.
Now, hoping to ride the BJP wave that began with the Lok Sabha elections and crested with the Maharashtra assembly elections, ABVP wants to recruit new student members from across the state, as part of a national drive. At present ABVP has 1.2 lakh members across the state.
ABVP's Mumbai secretary Yadunath Deshpande said, "The student community in Maharashtra has long been denied its right to participate in the democratic process. It is high time to restore this right."
Today, universities and colleges in the state conduct student council elections, but these are regarded as tokenism. "Unlike elections to the Delhi University Student's Union (DUSU), which are characterised by fervent campaigning, college students in Maharashtra do not even notice that university elections are on," said a student.
The 1992 ban on student elections, which disallows even posters, pamphlets and banners, was enforced by amending the Maharashtra Universities Act of 1974. It came after NSUI candidate Owen D'Souza was murdered during the Mithibai college union elections.
Previous ministers for higher education had refused to lift the ban, citing two fears: a repeat of the 1992 murder, and acts of violence among student bodies.
The ban wiped out state-level student politics, which once threw up many senior leaders across party lines. The ban restricted the entry of fresh blood into politics, said Mumbai university politics professor Deepak Pawar. He said, "The ban ensured that sons and daughters of politicians occupied the political space of the youth."