The BJP’s student wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) on Saturday wrested control of Delhi University Students Union (DUSU) from the National Students Union of India (NSUI), winning three of the four top posts.
The NSUI, which has the backing of the Congress, could retain only the position of the secretary. ABVP’s victory assumes significance as it comes ahead of the Delhi Assembly elections scheduled for November this year and the 2014 Lok Sabha poll.
The winning candidates attributed the success to BJP leader Narendra Modi who was declared the party’s prime ministerial candidate just a day before.
Modi’s persona was used widely by the candidates in the high-voltage campaign and his photographs adorned the party posters across the university’s campuses. Only in February this year did Modi address the students of Shri Ram College of Commerce.
ABVP candidate Aman Awana beat his NSUI rival Vishal Choudhary by over 1,500 votes. While Awana, a student at the Department of Buddhist Studies, polled 17,879 votes, Choudhary managed to secure only 16,346 votes.
The post of the vice-president was bagged by ABVP’s Utkarsh Chaudhary, who got 14,968 votes against NSUI candidate Kapil Sharma’s 11,275 votes.
The other ABVP success was that of Raju Rawat who bagged the post of joint secretary, beating NSUI candidate Kushank Khari.
Rawat and Khari polled 14,643 and 12,355 votes respectively. Karishma Thakur, the sole success for NSUI, bagged 14,662 votes against ABVP’s Anshu Lakra’s 11,944 votes for the post of secretary.
Interestingly, last year, the NSUI had won three of the four posts, except the position of joint secretary, which was bagged by the ABVP.