As the Delhi University Students' Union elections are coming up on September 12, the ruling Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad has released its pre-election panel of 10 candidates. Four candidates from these 10 will be shortlisted and chosen to fight the polls.
The 10 ABVP members are Tushar Dedha, Yogit Rathi, Sahil Malik, Akshit Dahiya, Sachin Bansal, Varun Rexwal, Pradeep Tanwar, Shivangi Kharwal, Jaideep Man and Mansi Chauhan. "Choosing these candidates was a difficult process," says Siddharth Yadav, Delhi State President, ABVP. "We had 15 karyakartas in line initially. We had to drop five. We have a very democratic process here. On the basis of the feedback that these 10 receive, we'll finalise our panel on September 4," he says.
With Shakti Singh, a law faculty student as its president, the previous year's DUSU was dominated by the ABVP. They weren't clear of controversies, which began with the infamous Ankiv Baisoya incident. The ex-DUSU president, Baisoya was found to have forged his documents to get admitted to the university. To avoid similar incidents, the student political organisation seems to have taken a lot of precautions this year. "This year, we have accessed the original documents that all these students have submitted and did independent scrutiny before announcing the panel. We are cross-checking the details with the exam dept too," says Siddharth. "We took a lot of precautions last year too. We only offered the candidature by following all the necessary procedures. We were, however, unable to access the original documents. We relied on university admissions," he adds.
Recently, there DUSU created an outcry among the students by installing a pedestal with busts of Veer Savarkar and Subhas Chandra Bose without obtaining necessary permissions. This move was criticised by the ABVP too and the pedestal was later shifted to the DUSU office. Siddharth, however, thinks that this wouldn't affect ABVP's chance of winning. "I don't think this was an election-related issue. It is not at all a concern for us," he says. "Also, there wasn't much conflict here. The ABVP also feels that these statues must be placed in DU. We still do not why permissions weren't given to us even after four attempts. Once the formalities are done, we'll take it back to the campus," he concludes.
