Left victorious in JNU Students Union polls

New Delhi, Nov 11: The Left-supported Students Federation of India(SFI)-All India Students Federation(AISF) alliance today won the posts of the President and the Joint Secretary while sharing the honours with the All India Students Association(AISA), the radical leftists, who claimed the posts of Vice-President and General Secretary.

The JNU Students Union has a total strength of 30 councillors out of which AISF-SFI has emerged as the biggest block with 10 councillors followed by Youth For Equality(YFE) with seven. The Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), AISA and National Students Union of India (NSUI) have four, two and one seats respectively, while independents account for four seats. Repoll will take place for two seats for which there was a tie.

The President's post was won by Dhananjay Tripathy of SFI-AISF combine with 909 votes while his nearest competitor Awadhesh Tripathy of the AISA got 836 votes. The third place went to Sonika Tyagi of the newly formed Youth For Equality(YFE) forum who got 810 votes.

After his victory, Dhananjay Tripathy, the President-elect said ''the JNU community has shown the door to those persuing reactionary policies and reinforced its progressive culture.'' ''It is also a major setback for those who were against the policy of reservation in higher education for the OBC's ,'' he added.

The vice-President's post was won by US citizen, Tyler Walker Williams belonging to the AISA who got 1076 votes defeating his nearest rival of the YFE by 340 votes.

The other important position of General Secretary went to Sandeep Singh of AISA with 943 votes defeating his nearest rival Arun Prasanth of the SFI-AISF alliance by 114 votes. However, Jyotsna Singh (AISF_SFI) garnered 800 votes defeating her closest contender of YFE by 78 votes for the Joint Secretary's post.

Overall 3572 votes were registered for the central panel candidates, counting for which started yesterday morning.

''We have started a struggle against the 27 per cent reservation policy for OBCs and have succeeded in registering our presence in the campus politics and we further pledge to take this struggle forward,'' said Sonika Tyagi of the YFE.

In this year's elections the ABVP and the NSUI did not perform as expected with the YFE making inroads into their vote bank.

UNI