New Delhi: Kanhaiya Kumar was brought into the Congress from the Left with a clear political proposition: his visibility among young voters could help the party rebuild its connection with a constituency it has struggled to retain.
A former JNU students’ union president and one of the more recognisable young faces to join the Congress, Kumar walked with Rahul Gandhi during the Bharat Jodo Yatra before being appointed AICC in-charge of the party’s student wing, NSUI, in July 2023. However, NSUI’s latest performance at the Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) election has raised questions about how far the party’s strategy has translated into electoral gains on the ground.
NSUI failed to win a single post on the four-member DUSU central panel this year—the first time since 2015 that it has drawn a blank in the university’s top body.
ABVP won the president, secretary and joint-secretary posts, while the vice-president’s post went to Independent candidate Deepanshu Shokeen, who had earlier sought an NSUI ticket.
The Shokeen episode is particularly uncomfortable for NSUI.
Shokeen won the vice-president’s election with 30,615 votes, defeating ABVP’s Ishu Maurya, who polled 16,910. NSUI’s official candidate, Vir Chatrath, finished a distant third with 4,313 votes. Shokeen’s margin over the ABVP candidate—13,705 votes—was more than three times the total votes secured by NSUI’s candidate.
This was not simply a case of an Independent candidate emerging from nowhere. Shokeen has been active with NSUI since 2023, the same year Kumar took charge, and campaigned for the organisation in the 2023 and 2024 DUSU elections. He also served as a student representative at his college.
In 2025, Shokeen sought to contest the student body elections on an NSUI ticket but was not selected. This year, he sought the ticket again, but the process ended in a controversy.
Shokeen said he was selected as the NSUI candidate but was later asked to withdraw. He refused, and subsequently contested as an Independent. NSUI sources, however, said he left the organisation after being asked to contest for a different post. A PTI report, citing sources close to Kumar, said Shokeen was offered the presidential ticket but insisted on contesting for vice-president.
Shokeen was not the only aspirant to contest outside the organisation after a dispute over ticket allocation. Another aspirant, Vishesh Yadav, contested the joint-secretary election outside the NSUI fold. He polled 15,778 votes—more than NSUI’s official candidate Gopal Choudhary, who secured 15,206.
Disputes over candidate selection are not new during Kumar’s tenure.
At Panjab University in 2024, NSUI rebel Anurag Dalal contested the presidential election as an Independent and won with 3,433 votes. NSUI’s official candidate Rahul Nain polled 501 votes and finished sixth.
A year later, another candidate, Sumit Kumar, contested outside the NSUI fold after a dispute over the organisation’s choice at Panjab University. He polled 2,660 votes, compared with 1,359 secured by NSUI’s official candidate Parabjot Singh Gill. The rebel did not win, but still polled more than the official candidate picked by Kanhaiya Kumar. ABVP’s Gaurav Veer Sohal won the election with 3,148 votes.
Notably, the results for the DUSU election were announced almost at the same time as Rahul Gandhi was receiving a rousing welcome in Indore for the fifth edition of his ‘Chhatron Ki Goonj’ initiative, where he was projected as a leader trusted by the youth. Gandhi has been attempting to make students and young people a central part of his political outreach. The DUSU results, however, made it clear that the fanfare on the ground and on social media did not translate to a poll victory—the students of Delhi University rejected NSUI.
(Edited by Chingkheinganbi Mayengbam)
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