JNUSU Polls: United-Left defeats ABVP to win all 4 seats
Making a clean sweep in the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union polls, the United Left Alliance defeated RSS-backed ABVP with considerable margins to retain all four seats. In the race for President, United Left's Geeta Kumari beat ABVP's Nidhi Tripathi by 464 votes while BAPSA's Shabana Ali with 935 votes finished third. Election officials said 4620 of the total 4639 votes polled were valid.
For JNUSU Vice-President, Simone Zoya Khan of All India Students' Association with 1,876 votes defeated ABVP's Durgesh Kumar with 1028 votes. Duggirala Srikrishna of Students' Federation of India polled 2082 votes to become General Secretary, beating ABVP's Nikunj Makwana with 975 votes. Shubhanshu Singh of Democratic Students' Federation received 1755 votes to become Joint Secretary followed by ABVP's Pankaj Keshari with 920 votes.
Geeta Kumari of United Left Alliance, comprising AISA, SFI, and DSF, stated, "The credit for mandate goes to students because people still believe that democratic spaces should be saved and right now, the only resistance is from students."
JNUSU President Geeta Kumari promised to take up several issues, including student Najeeb Ahmad's disappearance, the university's seat cuts, new hostels, saving the autonomy of JS-cash, and deprivation points. Asserting JNU has become more democratic, General Secretary Duggirala said, "We promise to reach out to students everyday and counter the aggressive policies of ABVP." He vowed to defend JNU's debate and dissent culture.
Election officials stated as many as 1512 NOTA (none of the above) votes were polled for all four JNUSU central panel posts of President, Vice-President, General Secretary and Joint Secretary. Also, a total of 31 councilors were elected for various other posts.
