United-Left supporters celebrate their candidates’ victory in JNUSU elections in New Delhi during the early hours of Sunday. (Photo: Asian Age)

New Delhi: JNU was painted red once again on Sunday as the united-Left alliance regained its grip on JNU Students’ Union (JNUSU) in a clean sweep against ABVP and others. 

The Left alliance of AISA-SFI-DSF won all four seats in the central panel, defeating the RSS backed ABVP, which finished as runners-up in each of the seats. It was a close fight for the race of president as Left candidate Geeta Kumari defeated Nidhi Tripathi of ABVP by 464 votes. 

After the results were declared on Sunday morning, Ms Tripathi said, “We have not lost. The ABVP has clinched the ideological, moral, and numerical victory in the polls.” 

In another statement issued by ABVP, it said that a “paradigm shift could be clearly discerned from the fact that the winning margin on the post of president has dropped drastically.” 

Geeta Kumari will replace Mohit Pandey, also from the Left, as the new JNUSU president.

BAPSA (Birsa Ambed-kar Phule Students’ Association) was not far behind at third place. Shabana Ali of BAPSA polled 935 votes, election panel officials said. Out of the total 4,639 votes polled, 4,620 were valid as 19 votes were discarded after voters put their slips in wrong ballots.

For the vice-president’s post, AISA’s Simone Zoya Khan got 1,876 votes out of a total of 4,620 votes. Ms Khan defeated Durgesh Kumar of ABVP, who got 1,028 votes. Duggirala Srikrishna (Left) won the general secretary’s post by polling 2,082 votes. He was followed by ABVP’s Nikunj Makwana with 975 votes.

The post of joint secretary has gone to Shubhanshu Singh (Left) who got 1,755 votes. Pankaj Keshari of ABVP got 920 votes.

Ms Kumari said, “The credit for the mandate goes to the students because people still believe that democratic spaces should be saved and right now, the only resistance is from the students.”