New Delhi: Amid the rift among Left-aligned student groups, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) has made significant inroads in the political landscape of Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU)—a traditionally Left stronghold—by winning a central panel seat for the first time in a decade, along with 24 of the 46 councillor positions it contested in the students’ union polls.
While ABVP has hailed its victory as a triumph over the Left’s “ideological tyranny”, Left-aligned groups have now begun a blame game, accusing each other of moving to form separate alliances.
This year’s JNU Students’ Union (JNUSU) elections saw a split among the dominant Left student groups, with the Students’ Federation of India (SFI)—affiliated with Communist Party of India (Marxist)—and the All India Students’ Association (AISA)—aligned with CPI (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation—forming separate alliances.
In contrast, a united Left front had defeated the ABVP in the 2024 JNUSU polls.
This year, ABVP’s Vaibhav Meena, a student at the School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, has secured the position of joint secretary.
The last time the ABVP won a central panel post was in 2015, when Saurav Sharma was elected joint secretary, marking the group’s first entry into the JNUSU panel in 14 years. Before that, Sandeep Mahapatra from ABVP was elected the president of JNUSU in 2001.
Meena won by a narrow margin of 85 votes, defeating Naresh Kumar, the candidate from AISA-DSF (Democratic Students’ Front) United Left Panel.
The margins for other positions were similarly close. For example, in the presidential race, Nitish Kumar of United Left Panel won by a gap of just 272 votes over the ABVP candidate. Meanwhile, the candidate from the SFI-led ‘Left-Ambedkarite’ alliance trailed ABVP’s candidate by 512 votes.
In the race for the general secretary post, the ABVP candidate narrowly lost by 114 votes to AISA-DSF candidate, Munteha Fatima. In the vice president contest, the ABVP candidate was only 34 votes behind the candidate from AISA-DSF.
Rajeshwar Kant Dubey, president of the ABVP JNU unit, said, “This victory signifies a democratic revolution against the ideological control the Left has maintained in JNU for years. ABVP will continue to work tirelessly, driven by its commitment to the student community and the noble mission of nation-building.”
However, AISA called ABVP’s victory a “shock” for the students’ community. “It is the need of the hour that all progressive organisations and forces on campus now resolve to come together to fight this formidable challenge of entrance of the ABVP in JNUSU. Despite the ABVP’s victory, the overall mandate clearly manifests the student community’s acceptance of the Left progressive politics,” AISA said in a statement.
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‘ABVP victory mirrors current dynamics of Indian politics’
According to students on campus, while ABVP has maintained a strong presence at JNU in recent years, the split between AISA and SFI played a significant role in allowing the party to secure a spot on the central panel.
“The fact that the margins between ABVP and the united Left panel are not very wide indicates that ABVP already has a strong foothold in JNU. However, if AISA and SFI had contested together, ABVP wouldn’t have won that seat. This split has given it the opportunity to be part of the central panel again. The last time ABVP was on the central panel in 2015, the sedition row occurred,” Ashutosh Kumar, a postgraduate student at the School of Social Sciences, told ThePrint.
Students also view ABVP’s victory as a reflection of the broader national political landscape.
“It mirrors the current dynamics of Indian politics, where the BJP has mastered the art of consolidating its own support base, while strategically fragmenting the Opposition. Just as the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) has managed to divide its rivals into multiple factions, the internal rifts within the Left student groups here at JNU have played into ABVP’s hands, helping them secure a foothold on,” said Basant Kumar, a PhD scholar at School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies.
However, N. Sai Balaji, former JNUSU president and AISA member, said that it would be incorrect to claim that ABVP has “unfurled the saffron flag” in JNU, as the majority of students still align with the Left. “ABVP couldn’t even win a single councillor seat from the School of Languages, the largest school in the university, which also saw the highest voter turnout. How can they call this a ‘saffron wave’?” he remarked.
ABVP had contested 46 of the 48 councillor positions, and secured 24 of them, sweeping all the seats in the School of Engineering, School of Sanskrit and Indic Studies, and the Amalgamated Centre.
Blame game
In its statement, AISA pointed out that while AISA-DSF united to fight together, the SFI opted to form a separate alliance, which faced credibility issues throughout the election process.
“While SFI claimed that BAPSA (Birsa Ambedkar Phule Students’ Association) was in an alliance with them, BAPSA came with a pamphlet that their organisation is not in alliance with SFI and the BAPSA candidate contested for the post of president in the elections. The opportunist and desperate attempt to appropriate the name of an Ambedkarite organisation was identified by the student community at large. The sectarian attitude manifested by the SFI shows in their performance on their presidential post, where they’ve secured 918 votes,” the organisation said.
In its statement, SFI’s Delhi unit attributed the results of JNUSU elections to the fragmentation of progressive and Left forces on campus, which it identified as the primary reason for ABVP winning the joint secretary post, and coming close to victory in other central panel positions.
“This fragmentation is also why ABVP saw gains in the student council elections. With the two largest progressive student organisations, SFI and AISA, contesting from separate panels, the vote was split, significantly narrowing the margin of victory in the Central Panel races,” the statement further said. “We hope that Progressive and Left forces take the requisite lessons from this Elections, and forge strong unity inside and outside the council to lead the student resistance against NEP—privatisation, centralisation and communalisation of education.”
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)
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