A united front of Left student groups won Sunday all four central panel posts in the JNU Students' Union defeating the ABVP by considerable margins in an election marred by allegations of "bias" against the poll committee, violence and suspension of counting for nearly 14 hours.
Announcing the results of the keenly contested Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union (JNUSU) election, the poll committee said N Sai Balaji was elected as president.
Balaji of the All India Students' Association (AISA) bagged 2,161 votes. He defeated RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) candidate Lalit Pandey, who garnered 982 votes, by a margin of 1,179 votes.
The Left-backed AISA, Students' Federation of India (SFI), Democratic Students' Federation (DSF) and All India Students' Federation (AISF) came together to form the 'United Left' alliance.
The 'United Left' candidate for the post of vice president, Sarika Chaudhary of the DSF, garnered 2,692 votes and trounced ABVP candidate Geetasri Boruah by a margin of 1,680 votes. Boruah secured 1,012 votes.
Aejaz Ahmad Rather of the SFI polled 2,423 votes and won the post of general secretary by defeating Ganesh Gurjar (1,123 votes) of the ABVP by 1,300 votes.
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Amutha Jayadeep of the AISF defeated ABVP's Venkat Choubey by 800 votes to win the post of joint secretary. Amutha bagged 2,047 votes as against Choubey's 1,247.
Balaji is a student of JNU's School of International Studies. Chaudhary, Ahmed and Amutha belong to the School of Social Sciences.
A total of 1,148 votes were polled in NOTA (none of the above) for the central panel. A total of 162 blank votes and 133 invalid votes were polled. A total of 31 councillors were elected - five from AISA, six from SFI, three from DSF and one each from BAPSA and NSUI. There were 13 independent candidates elected to the post of councillors.
Nominations for two councillor posts were rejected.
In a statement, the AISA congratulated the student community of JNU for "defying the continuous attack on JNU and JNUSU election process by ABVP-administration and RSS nexus".
"For the last four years the present government has unleashed continuous attack on JNU.
"From running the vicious Shut Down JNU campaign to destroying GSCASH, shielding teachers accused of sexual harassment, trampling upon all decision making bodies to intimidating JNU students by framing cases against them - the present regime has done all it can to destroy JNU," they said.
Meanwhile, the ABVP and NSUI claimed their vote share has increased from the last year.
Last year too, the Left student groups had won all the four central panel posts.
Besides the Left bloc and the ABVP, there were candidates of the NSUI and the BAPSA (Birsa Ambedkar Phule Students Association), a student group advocating Dalit causes.
The voter turnout in the election on Friday was 67.8 per cent, believed to be the highest in six years. Over 5,000 students cast their votes.
Even before the results were announced, there was a festive atmosphere in the Left camp.
With their faces smeared with red 'gulal', the students raised slogans of 'Justice for Rohith' and 'Justice for Najeeb'. As members of the Election Committee emerged out of the counting centre, it's chairman Himanshu Kulshreshtha, a student himself, was hailed by the Left who shouted, 'JNU EC ko Lal Salaam'.
Rohith Vemula, a student of Hyderabad Central University, committed suicide alleging harassment by the varsity administration in 2016. Najeeb Ahmed, a student of JNU, went missing from the campus under suspicious circumstances in 2016. He has since been untraceable.
Former student leaders Kanhaiya Kumar and Umar Khalid, who were in the middle of a sedition row in 2016, also congratulated the Left on their victory.
"To be on the Left today is to be on the Right side of History. Red Salute to Comrades. The People United Shall Always Be Victorious.#WeAreJNU #JNUSUElection2018," Kumar tweeted.
Khalid said the mandate meant the students had rejected the anti-student agenda of the ruling party.
"The mandate from JNU is an unambiguous rejection of RSS/BJP's anti-student agenda as well as jumlebaazi, economic loot, corruption & politics of communal hatred. It is a message from the students to the regime before general elections in 2019. The fight is on...#JNUSUElection2018," he posted on Twitter.
Bollywood actress Swara Bhasker, a JNU alumnus, also congratulated the Left on its big win.
"Clean sweep for Left Unity in #JNUSUelections2018 #JNUSU_Election2018 All 4 central panel posts landslide victory for left unity #JNUSUresults Congratulations!!!!!," she posted on the microblogging site.
There was high drama on Saturday as counting was suspended for close to 14 hours after the ABVP staged protests claiming it was not informed about the start of the counting process.
The counting, which was suspended at 4 am, resumed at 6.30 pm after two teachers from the Grievance Redressal Cell were appointed as observers for the exercise, officials said.
The ABVP and the Left groups had indulged in a blame game as they accused each other of roughing up their members on the campus.
President of ABVP-JNU unit Vijay Kumar had alleged that counting of votes was being done without adhering to the rules and had said the biased way of handling elections put a question mark on the election committee's neutrality. He claimed that their counting agents were not called by the Election Committee at the time of counting.
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