ABVP, SFI Fight it out as Jadavpur University Students Vote after Three Years

Kolkata: The students' union elections in the Jadavpur University, held after a gap of three years, went on peacefully on Wednesday, with RSS-affiliated ABVP and CPI (M)-backed SFI claiming they received a good response from the students.

A university official said the elections in both Arts and Engineering faculties began at 10am and will continue till evening. "There has been no untoward incident so far," the official said.

SFI's Jadavpur University unit leader Ushashi Pal said a large number of students voted enthusiastically. "We were cautious of not falling into ABVP's trap and asked our activists and supporters to be careful so that the election process was not disrupted," Pal said.

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) had put up its candidates for the first time in the students' union polls of JU, known as a hotbed of Left-wing politics.

"We were careful so that the SFI or other Left unions could not instigate any trouble," ABVP's JU unit leader Shyamasree Karmakar said.

The elections were conducted for central panels of the two faculties. Each central panel has posts of a chairperson, a general secretary and two assistant general secretaries.

The ABVP and the SFI contested 40 posts each in the two faculties, including those of class representatives. The AISA and the Trinamool Congress Chatra Parishad (TMCP) were also in the fray.

The results of the students' union elections will be declared on Thursday. Students' union polls in state universities had been put on hold for nearly three years since January 2017.

The state government had imposed a blanket ban on students' union elections following violence on campuses across West Bengal ahead of the 2016 Assembly elections.

However, after representations from various students' bodies and feedback from higher educational institutes, the state government had announced that elections to four universities, including Jadavpur, Presidency and Rabindra Bharati, would be held.

JU students had been agitating for long demanding that students' union elections be held.