Student/Youth

A vindictive Vice Chancellor + ABVP Grand Alliance know they can't win JNUSU, so they try every trick to derail JNUSU election. This year’s JNUSU elections saw a massive turnout of 67.9% of students participating with 5762 votes. The ABVP, backed by the JNU Administration, went to Court to stop the Election Committee from declaring the results.  Eventually, the Court ruled that the results be declared. The mandate – which the whole of JNU knew anyway – was declared formally.

WOMEN students of BHU have risen up in protest against the administrative shielding of Prof SK Chaubey who has been found guilty of sexually harassing women students. The complaints committee against sexual harassment enquired into allegations that the professor made obscene gestures and vulgar comments to women students during an academic trip to Odisha last year, and found him guilty. The committee recommended stern action.

IN the DUSU polls this year, AISA emerged even stronger than before - with a significant increase in votes since last year, both in absolute term and percentage!

In an unequal playing ground for common students, in contrast with the government-backed ABVP that contested the election with huge money power, common students have strengthened their support for AISA.

ABVP managed to win the post of President, VP and Joint Secretary, while NSUI won the Secretary post.

STUDENTS and and youth from across the country and from more than 60 organisations flooded Delhi on 7 February with their banners and posters at the Young India Adhikar March from Red Fort to Parliament Street where a massive public meeting was held.

THE DU unit of AISA has started a campaign to assert students’ right to accommodation in which students are being mobilized to pressurise the University administration and the government to ensure accommodation to the students who come to DU from various parts of the country. The campaign called ‘A Room of My Own’ is also a campaign against the exploitation of students by inflated rents, electricity bills and brokerage.

THE 6th Bihar State RYA Conference was held in Jehanabad on 3 August. The conference was attended by over 500 delegates from over 25 districts from Bihar. As a tribute to the recent student-youth upsurge in the country, especially the clarion call of ‘Utho Mere Desh’, Jehanabad town was named Bhagat Singh-Ambedkar Nagar. The venue of the Conference (Jehanabad Town Hall) was named Rohith Vemula-Chandrasekhar Hall, the stage was named after the progressive author and activist Premchand and the gate was named after Com.

Enthusiastic Response For Student-Youth Adhikar Yatra

(AISA National President Sucheta De reports on the Student Youth Adhikar Yatra)

ON February 21 and 22 this year, ABVP unleashed an organized, viciously violent riot in Delhi University, attacking students and teachers with glass bottles, bricks, stones and hockey sticks. ABVP cadre uttered filthy abuse to women, pulling them by the hair, and they attacked several journalists, snatching and smashing cameras and phones. The Delhi Police stood watching, allowing the ABVP to run riot and indulge in repeated, open assaults.

ON 1 July 2016, AISA Delhi University unit leader Abhinav Kumar was brutally beaten up in the premises of his college, Deshbandhu college, by ABVP goons including Himanshu Bidhuri (son of BJP MP Ramesh Bidhuri), Rajat Choudhary and three more ABVP cadres. In the previous DUSU elections, Comrade Abhinav was AISA's DUSU Joint Secretary candidate. He had secured more than 10,000 votes, thus providing a massive challenge to the ABVP's politics of money and muscle power, and to their fascist agenda and propaganda. On 1 July, Comrade Abhinav was helping new students with admission formalities.

(All over the country students are waging struggles on India’s campuses. A brief update on these ongoing struggles follows.)

Court Stays JNU Punishments, Students End Hunger Strike