New Delhi: As voting for the Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) election began on Friday, student leaders from the ABVP and NSUI highlighted issues ranging from hostel facilities and Metro concessions to student welfare and campus elections.
ABVP vice-president candidate Ishu Maurya said the student body is aware of the issues students face and expressed confidence of winning the polls. “I am confident because we have worked among students for their welfare,” Maurya said.
Saying that Gen-Z could no longer be “misled”, he claimed ABVP would win all four DUSU posts as the RSS-BJP-backed student organization had been working with students from the beginning.
Maurya’s rival NSUI vice-president candidate, Vir Chatrath, said the organization’s campaign had focused on student issues. He said the NSUI sought students’ problems through a campaign before the elections and used their responses to prepare its manifesto.
“The most important issue in our manifesto is hostels,” Chatrath said, linking the demand to the recent collapse of a paying guest accommodation in south Delhi’s Satya Niketan, in which seven people were killed.
Chatrath said one of his close associates is among those injured in the incident and underwent treatment at AIIMS Trauma Centre.
“If those students had hostel facilities, perhaps so many lives would not have been lost,” he said. He also raised the issue of Metro concessions, alleging that the ABVP had not fulfilled a promise made in its previous manifesto.
Chatrath said the NSUI would work towards expanding hostel facilities and other student-related demands.
He also expressed confidence in the NSUI’s prospects, saying, “I know that NSUI is going to sweep this time.}
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At Campus Law Centre-II, students also raised questions about the use of electronic voting machines and the availability of the NOTA option in the union elections. A student, Gopala, said the centre’s website had no official notification on the use of EVMs and questioned how a single NOTA option could apply to two posts on one EVM.
He said he had raised the issue with election officials and was asked to submit a written complaint. Appealing to students to vote, he said, “If you stay at home, those who are not good will win”.