JNUSU Polls: AISA-SFI Combine Wins All Four Seats, ABVP Comes Third

New Delhi: The AISA-SFI left wing combine completed a clean sweep on Saturday by winning all four seats in the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) elections held in the capital on Friday, news agency PTI reported.

Consolidating on its earlier lead, the Students Federation of India (SFI) and the All India Students Association (AISA) walked away with the posts of President, Vice President, General Secretary, and the Joint Secretary after the counting which started on Saturday ended late in the evening.

The post of Joint Secretary, was a keenly fought contest with the Democratic Students Federation (DSF) in the lead for a very long time followed by the AISA-SFI candidate in the second position.

The Left alliance emerged victorious on 30 out of 31 seats for councillors. ABVP won only one councillor seat from Department of Sanskrit.

Giving a tough fight to the Left-Unity was Birsa Ambdekar Phule Students Association (BAPSA) which was on the second position for the Presidential post while ABVP was the second

runner for the post of Vice President and General Secretary.

Mohit Pandey of Left-Unity alliance has been elected as the JNUSU president, defeating Rahul Sonpimple of BAPSA by a margin of 409 votes.

"Amal Pipli, Satapurta Chakraborty and Tabez Hussain have emerged victorious on the posts of Vice President, General Secretary and Joint Secretary, respectively," said Ishita Mana, the Chief Election Commissioner for JNUSU polls.

Students Front for Swaraj (SFS), the student wing of AAP's breakaway group Swaraj Abhiyan, made its debut this year by fielding its candidates for the four crucial central panel posts in the varsity but failed to open its account.

Other organisations which had fielded their candidates in the JNU polls include Congress' National Students Union of India and Democratic Students Federation (DSF), a breakaway group of SFI.

DSF's Joint Secretary candidate Pratim Ghoshal gave a tough fight to Left-Unity's Tabrez Hasan but lost the election a margin of 362 votes. While Tabrez got 1,670 votes, a total of 1,308 voters chose Pratim.

Satapurta Chakrabaorty, the only girl in the newly elected panel, polled 2,424 votes, defeating Vijay Kumar by a margin of 1,094 votes for the post of General Secretary.

Amal PP won the Vice Presidential post with the highest margin of 1,304 votes, defeating Ravi Ranjan Choudhary.

The SFI, affiliated to the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), and the AISA, the student wing of the Communist Party of India-Marxist-Leninist (CPI-ML), had formed an alliance to fight the elections.

This was the first student election in the campus since the arrest of JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar -- of the CPI-backed All India Students Federation -- on charges of sedition after a group of students allegedly raised anti-India slogans at an event in February.

Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, who were arrested along with Kanhaiya in the sedition case, were also seen cheering for the winners of the Left alliance dancing around a dummy corpse with ABVP written on it.

A total of 18 candidates tested their electoral fortunes for the Central Panel and 79 were in fray for the post of councillors.

Reacting to the results, CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury congratulated the winners on Twitter.

Kanhaiya Kumar, who had an eventful tenure as the JNUSU president, congratulated his successor