Left-Unity alliance sweeps JNU student union polls defeating

ABVP New Delhi, Sep 10 (PTI) The "Left-Unity" alliance todayswept all four seats in the JNU students union election,defeating the RSS’ student wing ABVP with considerablemargins. The Left-affiliated groups have been locked in a battlewith ABVP over dominance of their respective ideology on thecampus in aftermath of the February 9 incident during whichanti-national slogans were allegedly raised, leading to arrestof three students, including the outgoing JNUSU presidentKanhaiya Kumar, in a sedition case. For the first time, the CPI(ML)’s student wing All IndiaStudents’ Association (AISA), which has enjoyed a strong holdon the campus for years, formed an alliance with the StudentFederation of India (SFI) of the CPI(M). The alliance also emerged victorious on 30 out of 31seats for councillors. ABVP won only one councillor seat fromDepartment of Sanskrit. Giving a tough fight to the Left-Unity was Birsa AmbdekarPhule Students Association (BAPSA) which was on the secondposition for the Presidential post while ABVP was the secondrunner for the post of Vice President and General Secretary. "Mohit Pandey of Left-Unity alliance has been elected asthe JNUSU president, defeating Rahul Sonpimple of BAPSA by amargin of 409 votes. "Amal Pipli, Satapurta Chakraborty and Tabez Hussain haveemerged victorious on the posts of Vice President, GeneralSecretary and Joint Secretary, respectively," said IshitaMana, the Chief Election Commissioner for JNUSU polls. Students Front for Swaraj (SFS), the student wing ofAAP’s breakaway group Swaraj Abhiyan, made its debut this yearby fielding its candidates for the four crucial central panelposts in the varsity but failed to open its account. Other organisations which had fielded their candidates inthe JNU polls include Congress’ National Students Union ofIndia and Democratic Students Federation (DSF), a breakawaygroup of SFI. DSF’s Joint Secretary candidate Pratim Ghoshal gave atough fight to Left-Unity’s Tabrez Hasan but lost the electiona margin of 362 votes. While Tabrez got 1,670 votes, a totalof 1,308 voters chose Pratim. A total of 1,140 students exercised the None of The Above(NOTA) option. Satapurta Chakrabaorty, the only girl in the newlyelected panel, polled 2,424 votes, defeating Vijay Kumar by amargin of 1,094 votes for the post of General Secretary. Amal PP won the Vice Presidential post with the highestmargin of 1,304 votes, defeating Ravi Ranjan Choudhary. Celebrations broke out on JNU campus as soon as theresults were announced where students danced to the beats oftraditional daflis with gulal smeared over their faces amidchants of "azaadi". Kanhaiya, who had an eventful tenure as the JNUSUpresident, congratulated his successor. "The nation wants to know.." What happened to #ABVP in#JNUSUPolls? #ShutDownJNU became #ShutDownABVP(sic)," hetweeted. PTI GJSSMN