Kolkata: Ultra-left and Left organisations swept the students union elections in the Jadavpur University where the vote count was held on Thursday.
Contesting for the first time, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (AVBP), the student wing of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), finished second in the Engineering faculty ahead of the Students Federation of India.
Radical Left group Democratic Students Federation retained all the four office-bearers’ post in the Engineering faculty, while ‘We the Independent’ (WTI) – a consolidation of pro-Maoist and other extreme Left groups – kept intact their hegemony in the science section.
The SFI, student wing of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) maintained its hold over the Arts faculty, winning all the four office-bearer seats after a close fight with the Democratic Students Association – an extreme left group.
The ABVP trailed behind the DSF by a huge margin in the Engineering faculty, even though it finished second. The SFI took the third spot.
In the contest for the general secretary’s post, the DSF got 3.320 votes, while ABVP bagged 523. In assistant general secretary (Salt Lake) and assistant general secretary (day), the DSF candidates secured 605 and 2.376 votes respectively, as against 147 and 376 votes which went to the ABVP.
The Trinamool Congress Chhatra Parishad (TMCP), an affiliate of the state’s ruling Trinamool Congress, fared poorly in each of the three faculties.
However, the ABVP failed to make any mark in the Arts faculty.
The union elections were held peacefully after a three-year break on Wednesday.
The elections were held for posts of 12 office bearers as also over 600 class representatives. However, the majority of the posts went uncontested.
The humanities faculty has the highest number of students – over 4,000. There are 2,000 students in the science faculty and 700 in the engineering faculty.
The ABVP fielded candidates for nine out of 12 office bearers of the union, adding a fresh dimension to the polls.
