New Delhi: Nearly two months after Gen Z-led protests over education, examination irregularities and youth grievances gripped campuses and entered the national political conversation, the Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) election has delivered a familiar verdict.
The protest wave failed to rupture traditional university politics, with RSS youth wing ABVP winning three of the four central posts.
The result comes weeks after RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat sought to reach out to the younger generation, saying their grievances were genuine, and that protest was a legitimate form of democratic dialogue. He also rejected the idea that protesting students should be branded “anti-national”, saying they were “our own people” and India’s future.
While both ABVP and NSUI adapted their DUSU campaigns to appeal to Gen Z, using reels, memes and AI-driven social media content, the final verdict favoured ABVP, which read the result as a “Gen Z verdict”.
After winning the presidency, ABVP’s Yash Dabas said he was a Gen Z student himself and called the result a message that “Gen Z is with the nation, and Gen Z is with ABVP”.
The one major break from the established pattern came in the vice-president’s contest, where Independent Deepanshu Shokeen, a former member of the Congress-affiliated National Students’ Union of India (NSUI), defeated both the ABVP and NSUI candidates by a wide margin.
Shokeen, who had sought an NSUI ticket, was left out of the final panel. The NSUI instead fielded Virr Chatrath, a student of Buddhist Studies and son of Congress leader Manish Chatrath.
He then contested as an Independent—and the result exposed the scale of the opening NSUI had left. Shokeen polled 30,615 votes, against 16,910 for ABVP’s Ishu Maurya, and 4,313 for NSUI’s Chatrath.
दिल से शुक्रिया DU 🙏🏻 pic.twitter.com/tKOYKKwXn7
— Deepanshu Shokeen (@DeepanshuS_001) September 19, 2026
The Shokeen episode also triggered a broader conversation about Congress-style ticket distribution, with commentators on social media drawing a parallel between NSUI’s handling of competing aspirants and the Congress’s recurring challenge of managing multiple claimants when tickets are decided.
Meanwhile, Amitabh Dubey, a member of the Congress communication department, disputed the claim that NSUI had denied Deepanshu Shokeen a DUSU ticket. In a post on X, Dubey said Shokeen was offered the president’s ticket but turned it down, and subsequently chose to contest the vice-president’s post as an Independent.
The other three central posts, however, went to ABVP. Yash Dabas won the presidency by 2,053 votes, Riya Chhawadi won the secretary’s post by 6,781 votes, while Lakshya Raj Singh won the post of joint secretary by 837 votes.
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ABVP’s track record
ABVP has remained the dominant force in DUSU for much of the past decade. It won three of the four central posts in 2016, 2018, 2019 and 2023, and again in 2025 and 2026. The two exceptions were 2017 and 2024, when ABVP and the NSUI split the four posts 2-2. ABVP had earlier swept all four posts in 2015 and 2014.
Before that, DUSU was once a stronghold of NSUI, which swept all four central posts in 2005 and 2007. The balance began shifting in the early 2010s.
In the last two elections, however, NSUI managed to win just one post each year, before being shut out of the central panel altogether this year.
Soon after the verdict was announced, BJP leaders sought to frame the ABVP victory as a “youth’s verdict”. Union minister and BJP leader Kiren Rijiju wrote on X: “Voice of the Youth is Laud & Clear !!!”
BJP president Nitin Nabin congratulated ABVP on its victory in the DUSU elections, describing it as a reflection of what he called the youth’s “continued faith in positive and constructive student politics”.
Congratulations to all my young friends at Delhi University on ABVP’s historic victory in the DUSU elections!
This victory reflects the youth’s continued faith in positive and constructive student politics, rooted in the spirit of Nation First, and their strong resolve to… pic.twitter.com/Q7DdxqahWZ
— Nitin Nabin (@NitinNabin) September 19, 2026
In a post on X, Nabin said the result reflected students’ commitment to the “Nation First” ethos and their resolve to contribute to the vision of a “Viksit Bharat”. He also congratulated the winning candidates and those who worked for the ABVP campaign.
Union minister and former BJP president J.P. Nadda, reacting to the result, said the victory reflected what he described as the “unwavering faith” of the country’s youth in the ideology of “Nation First”. He also said ABVP workers, drawing inspiration from Swami Vivekananda, would continue to promote “patriotism, service, and nation-building” among young people.
Saurav Das of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), meanwhile, said that the majority of students are against the ruling dispensation—but fractured, and hence it benefits the government. Taking to X, he wrote, “…But this is a silver lining. Those bagging positions must remember they are not kings or queens. The majority DID NOT vote for them.”
“Instead of focusing on hounding the CJP, it will do well for the Congress and its bureaucratic wings to get their game sorted. That sorting game has been going on for 12 years now and people are losing patience—just like the rebel NSUI candidate who has won with a HUGE margin for VP on being denied NSUI ticket. Some in the Left unity—not all—are too focused on ideological purity and exclusivity. They should wake up and smell the coffee—no one is running to them for their validation. If this is the opposition ‘unity’, then I’m afraid they will continue to remain in Opposition,” Das wrote on X.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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