Weeks after loss in Panjab University polls, AAP ‘pulls’ student wing CYSS out of DUSU race

AAP leadership directed Chhatra Yuva Sangharsh Samiti leaders to 'pull out' of the DUSU polls, fearing a loss would 'hit image of the Delhi govt' where AAP is in power, it is learnt.

Banners across Delhi University campus as part of campaign for coming DUSU polls | ANI

New Delhi: Elections to the Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) are scheduled to be held Friday, after a gap of four years, but the Chhatra Yuva Sangharsh Samiti (CYSS), the students’ wing of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), has decided to give the polls a miss. This comes after the party’s top leadership directed CYSS campus leaders to pull out of the race, fearing a loss would “hit the image of the Delhi government” where the AAP is in power, ThePrint has learnt.

Sources in AAP told ThePrint that the decision of the AAP leadership was conveyed to the CYSS after the student body’s defeat in the Panjab University Campus Students’ Council (PUCSC) elections earlier this month, despite a strong push by the party’s Punjab unit. The AAP is also in power in Punjab.

While the party has been in power in Delhi since 2015, it formed government in Punjab in 2022, unseating the Congress in the state assembly polls.

However, so far, the party’s student body has not been able to make its presence felt in the prestigious higher educational institutions of the region, except in 2022, when it won the post of the PUCSC president.

This time, the CYSS Delhi unit was not just preparing to contest the DUSU polls, but had also reached out to the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI), the Students’ Federation of India (SFI) and the All India Students Association (AISA), affiliated to the Congress, CPI(M) and the CPI(ML) respectively, for alliance, sources in AAP told ThePrint.

“The CYSS got a positive response from the Left, but the NSUI did not respond to the offer of a joint fight against the ABVP [the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological fountainhead of the Bharatiya Janata Party]. The plan was to replicate the strategy of the INDIA alliance at the campus level. In any case, we are not even contesting now. The leadership conveyed the decision to the CYSS after its showing in the Panjab University polls,” said an AAP leader.

In the PUCSC polls, held on 6 September, the NSUI wrested the post of the president from the CYSS, which had won the seat last year, contesting the Panjab University campus polls for the first time by fielding an ABVP turncoat. The CYSS candidate stood second in this September’s polls, with 2,399 votes. The winning NSUI candidate received 3,002 of 10263 votes.

“The defeat in the PUCSC polls has subjected the party and the [Bhagwant Mann led] Punjab government to a lot of scorn from the Opposition. The party wanted to avoid any repeat of that in Delhi. A defeat in DUSU polls could provide ammo [ammuition] to the Opposition to attack the Delhi government, as it would then be described as a referendum on its work. It would hit the image of the government ahead of the 2024 general elections,” the AAP leader added.

A second AAP leader told ThePrint that the party’s decision to pull out CYSS from the DUSU race would also help prevent split in anti-ABVP votes.

“It is true that initially the CYSS unit did prepare for the polls, but it is not strong enough to defeat the ABVP on its own. That is why it sought to ally with the NSUI and Left. Since that did not happen, we pulled out. Otherwise CYSS would have played the role of vote cutter,” the leader said.

CYSS Delhi unit secretary Kamal Tiwari, a masters student at DU, believes, however, that the outfit could have mounted a strong fight in the DUSU polls.

“Even till three months ago, we were not that strong organisationally. But thinking that we will contest the polls, we worked hard to strengthen our presence. Earlier this month, around 1,500 students turned up at a tour of the Delhi Assembly arranged by us. Regardless of whether we contest or not, I will remain with the CYSS and fight the other parties,” Tiwari told ThePrint.

ThePrint has reached Priyanka Kakkar, AAP chief national spokesperson over phone for comment on the CYSS not taking part in the DUSU polls. The report will be updated once a comment is received.

Ever since its formation in September 2014, the CYSS has contested the DUSU polls only twice — in 2015 and 2018 — but failed to win both times, trailing behind the ABVP and the NSUI.

Meanwhile, while the plan to replicate the INDIA template — student wings of Opposition parties joining hands to defeat the BJP-aligned ABVP — has fallen through in the case of DUSU, the Delhi University Teachers’ Association (DUTA) elections will see a joint fight of AAP, Congress and Left-backed candidates against the National Democratic Teachers Front (NDTF), backed by the Bharatiya Janata Party.

The Democratic Teachers Union Alliance, the name of the opposition collective, has nominated Aditya Narayan Misra of the AAP-affiliated Academic for Action and Development Delhi Teachers’ Association (AADTA) as their joint candidate for the position of DUTA president.

AAP in student body elections

In 2015, riding high on its massive victory in the Delhi assembly polls, the CYSS had centred its campaign for the DUSU elections around AAP chief and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, while in 2018 it had stitched up an alliance with the AISA.

Just like in this month’s PUCSC polls, which saw even Punjab government ministers reportedly being deputed by AAP to steer the CYSS campaign, during the 2015 DUSU elections, the party had drawn criticism for the alleged use of government machinery to drum up support for its student wing.

At a rock concert organised by the CYSS at the Talkatora Stadium in the days leading up to the DUSU polls, Kejriwal had announced the launch of a Higher Education Credit Guarantee Scheme under which loans up to Rs 10 lakh were to be provided to students pursuing higher education in Delhi.

The concert saw performances by noted singers Shilpa Rao and Vishal Dadlani. Dadlani was closely associated with the AAP and had even composed and sung its 2015 and 2020 Delhi assembly poll campaign songs.

Eventually, though, the CYSS finished third in two central panel posts, and second and fourth in two other posts.

Its presidential candidate finished behind the ABVP and the NSUI, garnering only 14.7 percent of the votes. Subsequently, the CYSS skipped the 2016 and 2017 DUSU polls, citing the use of “too much money and muscle power” by the ABVP and NSUI to woo the student voters.

However, it returned to the fray in 2018, teaming up with the AISA, only to once again finish behind the ABVP and NSUI in all four posts — president, vice-president, secretary and joint secretary — of the DUSU.

In 2017, the CYSS sprung a surprise in Rajasthan, with 46 of its 83 candidates winning various posts in student body polls colleges across the state. Among the 46 winners, 12 won posts of presidents.

But the party did not play up its success then as Kumar Vishwas, its dissident face, was leading the Rajasthan unit then. The CYSS did not contest the 2019 DUSU polls, and there were no elections to the union in 2020, 2021 and 2022 owing to the Covid-19 pandemic.

(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)