Beating money power, left makes a mark in Delhi University polls

Delhi University has never been fascinated with the colour red. But the students’ union elections this year saw a marked shift when the Left-leaning All India Students’ Association (AISA) won 16% of the total votes on the campus.

AISA candidates came third in all the four seats of the Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU). Winning a seat may still be a distant dream, but making inroads in DU itself is a great achievement for a union that does not use money or muscle power like the other two prominent unions — National Students’ Union of India (supported by the Congress) and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad
(supported by the BJP).

“DUSU elections are about money power and NSUI and ABVP have plenty of it. But students have now realised that the lavish parties thrown for them do not last for long and ultimately it is the real issues that matter,” says Sunny Kumar, an AISA representative in DU.

Even though the election code of conduct in DUSU allows expenditure of only Rs 5,000 per candidate, according to conservative estimates, NSUI and ABVP candidates spend anywhere between Rs 10 lakh  and Rs 15 lakh each.

Flamboyant candidates spend anywhere between Rs 50 lakh and Rs 60 lakh — on buying votes as well as on goons to keep other candidates’ campaigns under check.

So did this change come suddenly? Sunny explains that the AISA strategy was to politicise the minds of students on national issues during the past few years.
This year, AISA tried to create awareness of misuse of money on election campaign by focussing on corruption in the country.

In 2010, the presidential candidate of AISA won around 2,900 votes and the tally went up to 4,000 in 2012. It reached an unprecedented 8,300 votes this year.

The NSUI, though, refuses to see any shift in the mindset of DU students. “This year’s increase in vote should not be taken seriously as AISA still lags behind the major parties by a huge margin,” says NSUI spokesperson Amrishranjan Pandey. He credits the AISA’s unprecedented success to anti-Modi wave in Delhi University.

The ABVP, on the other hand, looks at AISA as a party with a fluctuating voter base. “This year’s performance by AISA is not extraordinary as the left wing party has a fluctuating vote base. In the past years also sometimes they got a good number of votes,” says Rohit Chahal, state secretary of ABVP.