Rajasthan: Polling Concludes for Student Union Elections

New Delhi: After a gap of two years, college and university campuses across Rajasthan on Friday witnessed the student body elections, which saw voting for multiple candidates who campaigned in full swing in a bid to woo voters. In nearly 15 universities and over 400 government colleges across the state, around 6 lakh students were expected to vote.

In Rajasthan University in Jaipur, the state's premier institute, which remained in focus, 48 percent voting was recorded at the end of the polling period at 1 pm in the day. Around 20,000 students studying in the four constituent colleges – Maharaja College, Maharani College, Commerce College, and Rajasthan College – along with post-graduate students in the university, were eligible to vote.

Meanwhile, voting was also concluded in Bikaner’s Maharaja Ganga Singh University, Sikar’s Pt. Deendayal Upadhyay Shekhawati University, Jodhpur’s Jai Narain Vyas University, and Udaipur’s Mohan Lal Sukhadia University, among others.

The elections were held after a gap of two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Counting of votes will begin at 10 am on Saturday, subsequently after which results will be declared.

On Friday, tight security arrangements were made for the peaceful conduct of polls. However, sporadic incidents of protests and tussle were seen in Bikaner, Kota, Sikar and Udaipur, where confrontation between students and police was reported. Police resorted to cane-charging in Dungar College in Bikaner while three students were detained in Udaipur, according to the police.

As per media reports, a neck-to-neck contest between candidates of arch-rivals Congress-backed National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) and RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) is expected to take place for most of the posts in student bodies across Rajasthan. In some universities, Communist Party of India (Marxist) – affiliated Students’ Federation of India (SFI) is also putting up a strong fight.

For the post of president in the Rajasthan University Students’ Union, the NSUI has fielded Ritu Barala and the ABVP Narendra Yadav. Niharika Jorwal, daughter of Murali Lal Meena, minister in the Congress-led state government, along with Nirmal Chaudhary, Pratapbhanu Meena and Hiteshwar Bairwa are also in the fray.

On Thursday, NSUI released its election manifesto in which the students' union touched upon numerous issues facing the universities in Rajasthan, along with resolving to fight for jobs for university students by pressing for placement cells on campuses.

On the other hand, in a manifesto released on Wednesday, ABVP stated that its primary goal will be to make the women's campus secure and promised to ensure the opening of Rajasthan University's newly constructed library.

Sonu Jilowa, state secretary, SFI informed NewsClick on Friday that his union while fighting in the election for the general secretary post in Rajasthan University and for all the posts in universities in Bikaner, Jodhpur, and Sikar, among others, has primarily focused its campaign against National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.

In 2019, in a major embarrassment to the Congress party, NSUI failed to bag the student union president post in any of the government universities. In a close fight, it lost out seats to ABVP, which had also won five presidents' posts at the Rajasthan University.