After a hiatus of eight years, the right-wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad swept three out of four top posts including that of president, in the Delhi University Students Union elections giving a deadly blow to Congress’ National Students’ Union of India.

The ABVP won with good margins the election that had sobered down due to implementation of the Lyngdoh Committee’s recommendations. However, the voting percentage recorded was quite low, at merely 35 per cent.
The ABVP declared the win to be a mandate against the Congress government at both Centre and city level.
Jitender Choudhary doing MA (Buddhist Studies) won the post of president this time while Priya Dabas was elected the vice-president.
Jitender defeated NSUI’s Harish Choudhary, a student of SGBT Khalsa College, by a margin of 1,943 votes, polling 9,259 votes in the elections.
Priya Dabas, who polled 8,679 votes, came ahead of NSUI’s A.A. Vardhan by 1,518 votes in the contest for vice-president’s post. Neetu Dabas, who was elected the new secretary, won with the largest margin, defeating her NSUI rival Deepika Deswal by 4.495 votes.
Akshay Kumar, the only saving grace for the NSUI, was elected joint secretary. He defeated ABVP’s Saurabh Uniyal by a mere 626 votes. Kumar polled 6,831 votes.
The student fronts of other parties however, could not make a mark for themselves even by opening an impressive account. AISF’s presidential candidate Aparajitha, daughter of CPI leader D. Raja, polled 2,999 votes, coming third behind the ABVP and NSUI candidates, respectively.
State BJP secretary Ashutosh Srivastav said that the result reflects the poor image that the Congress government has earned at the state and Central level due to the embezzlement of CWG 2010 funds.
“This also breaks the myth that Rahul Gandhi’s youth wave is very popular as it’s the youth who declared ABVP victorious,” he said.
For the NSUI, it was a shock. “This is unfortunate for us. We will analyse where we lacked and will build our strength and rework our strategies for the next polls,” said Shahnawaz Chaudhary, state secretary of NSUI which had dominated the Dusu since 2002.
However, he rejected ABVP’s suggestion that the verdict was a thumbs down to Rahul Gandhi and his youth activism.