NSUI wins top post at DU, accuses HRD Ministry
NEW DELHI : The Delhi Congress on Wednesday described the DUSU election results as a rejection of the speech delivered by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on September 11 and acceptance of the Congress’ ideology explained by party vice-president Rahul Gandhi in his speech in Berkeley on the counting day.
The NSUI’s Rocky Tusheed won the President’s post by a margin of 1,590 votes, while the party’s Kunal Sehrawat defeated the ABVP candidate by 175 votes. e ABVP’s Mahamedha Nagar defeated NSUI’s Minakshi Meena by 2,624 votes to win the post of Secretary while party’s joint secretary candidate Uma Shankar defeated NSUI’s Avinash Yadav 342 votes.
While Rahul Gandhi spoke on September 12 morning—the counting day—Modi spoke at length the previous day, addressing a students’ convention to mark the 125th anniversary of Swami Vivekananda’s Chicago address and BJP ideologue Deendayal Upadhyaya’s centenary celebrations.
The Congress-backed student body also accused the Human Resource Development Ministry and the RSS of putting pressure on the Delhi University administration in order to manipulate the DUSU results. The NSUI has alleged that cameras were turned off during the counting. “In the name of recounting HRD Ministry and RSS pressuring DU administration to manipulate the results. We’ll not let this happen,” the NSUI, which won the top two seats in the DUSU election today, tweeted shortly after the results were announced.
“Earlier, the plan was to hold the election on September 9, a weekend which has been the convention in the university. However, the election dates were deliberately pushed to September 12 in order to influence the students with PM’s speech a day before the poll. However, all efforts failed as students extended their support to our leader’s speech in Berkeley,” Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken said at a press conference after the results.
The former union minister also alleged that the Delhi University administration has been working under pressure from the BJP-led central government and has been ‘taking decisions to scuttle NSUI’s prospects in the DUSU polls’. Maken said the students’ wing has challenged the result for the post of joint secretary and if required they would move court.
“First they cancelled the nomination of our presidential candidate. We got it restored by moving the Delhi High Court. On Wednesday, initially, our election agents were told that the result was 3-1 in favour of NSUI. Then the ABVP demanded for recounting for the joint secretary post. It seems to be rigged as the cameras were switched off. Now we have demanded recounting,” Maken said.
The DU administration said the grievance cell will take a call on the application. Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari said ABVP used unfair means to win two seats.“The NSUI has all options open. You must have seen how the NSUI candidate for presidential post’s nomination was cancelled in an inappropriate manner. Later, Delhi HC cleared his nomination,” he said, referring to Rocky Tuseed who won the election.
“Today, he won the seat with a huge margin. This is not single example. The atmosphere in the country is changing. The person who misled the youth, he (Narendra Modi) is now being taught a lesson by them,” he added. Tewari said: “NSUI had also won the Punjab University Students Union and Rajasthan University Students Union elections. This is a sign of the wind of change in the country. The process of change has started with the NSUI.”
AICC secretary in charge of NSUI Girish Chodankar told IANS that the Congress’ students wing, National Students Union of India (NSUI), had won three of the four seats, including President, Vice President and Joint Secretary, in the Delhi University Students Union (DUSU) election. But the ABVP was subsequently declared victorious in the Joint Secretary seat.
“We had won three seats, but there was manipulation subsequently following the personal intervention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah, after which the results were tampered.”We have asked the election committee to recount the votes. If they do not do it by the end of the day, we will approach the Delhi High Court to contest the result. This is a matter of shame for the BJP that they have to manipulate results to ensure that ABVP wins,” Chodankar told IANS.
The Congress had earlier begun sending out congratulatory messages when it was reported that the NSUI had bagged three seats. Senior Congress leaders Ajay Maken and Sharmistha Mukherjee congratulated the students wing for winning three seats. But it was later announced that the Joint Secretary post went to the ABVP. Chief Election Officer S.B. Babbar, however, said there were no lapses in the counting as “DU is the only university which uses EVMs”.
“He (Avinash Yadav) is crying foul because he lost with a close margin. And as for lapses in video, they were no longer than a couple of seconds.” “There were no ABVP leaders inside, nor from NSUI, only the candidates,” Babbar told IANS.
