Prof. Raj Kumar Bhatia has been national president of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). He is now Professor of Economics in DAV College, Delhi. He has been active in Delhi University since 1967 and has closely been monitoring Delhi University Students? Union (DUSU) elections for the last more than three decades. Organiser representative Pramod Kumar spoke to him in New Delhi to know the reasons behind the defeat of ABVP in the recent DUSU elections. Excerpts:
Why did the ABVP lose all four seats to NSUI in DUSU elections?
It all happened because of the one provision of Lyngdoh Committee that was abruptly implemented in Delhi University (DU) and that too very late after the election process had been started. The election process began on August 2. A meeting of the University officials was held which took a decision to implement only one provision. The colleges and students came to know about this decision only on August 23 whereas August 24th was the last date for filing nominations. I feel it was a deliberate plan on part of the DU officials particularly the Election Officer Dr Gurmeet Singh in collusion with the Congress leaders. They messed up the whole thing. They implemented only one provision of Lyngdoh Committee, which says that there should be no academic arrears of the candidate.
The whole game plan was that the University authorities were bent upon providing help to the Congress and its students? wing NSUI. For the last few years some top Congress leaders like Oscar Fernandes and others have been taking more interest in this election and many months in advance they formulated detailed plans to win the elections. The Congress candidate for presidential post, Amrita Bahri, had no academic arrear. She is the daughter of a professor of Law. Her mother is a High Court advocate and the Chief Election Officer happens to be the friend of her parents. Therefore, they all, in order to hijack the elections, made this plan. This provision of no academic arrear was used against the proposed ABVP candidate, Vikas Dahia, whose name was almost known to everyone. This provision, which needed to be interpreted specifically in the context of Delhi University proved helpful for the NSUI candidate as the interpretation was tailor-made to debar Vikas Dahia from contesting.
But you should have gone to the court.
Yes, we immediately went to Delhi High Court. The University tried to mislead the Court to hide its guilt. But the Court did not go into the mischievous game plan of the University and merely confined itself to fractured implementation of the Lyngdoh Committee. There is one major recommendation of the Lyngdoh Committee that the University Union should represent all students including PhD students. But, fact is that many of the colleges (about 20) including most of the girls? colleges and prestigious St Stephen College and Daulat Ram Colleges are not affiliated to the students union. The University did not implement this condition of Lyngdoh Committee. Selective implementation of the Lyngdoh Committee created a mess. The University officials simply wanted to hold the election. Therefore, many of the college elections could not be held and the elections are being held again now because the Lyngdoh Committee says if some seats fall vacant within short time of the election, the by-elections should be held. By-elections are being held in many colleges now. It is because of the mess that was created. In the wake of the mischievous implementations of the Lyngdoh Committee the whole election was highjacked, which I call the rape of democracy.
The recommendations of Lyngdoh Committee came about one year back. If ABVP respects those recommendations why did it not field the candidates as per the Lyngdoh Committee'srecommendations?
That was not necessary. Because, if those conditions were to be implemented, the University should have informed accordingly in advance. Notification was issued on August 2 and there was nothing like this in that notification. From the next day they invited nominations based on the old form of DUSU elections, which were filed as per a particular pro forma issued by the University. In that pro forma the students had to give some undertakings. The students should have been told to clear their pending academic arrears in that pro forma. The conditions, on which you are going to conduct elections, must have been made clear at the time of notification. The match had already been started and in the middle the rules of the game were changed. Many times, the University authorities were asked by the media, students, etc., whether they are going to implement the Lyngdoh Committee recommendations. Once a University official clearly said that the elections would not be held on the basis of the Lyngdoh Committee.
The Lyngdoh Committee'srecommendations were implemented this year. But the ABVP has not been performing well in DUSU elections for the last four years. Why?
For that we made a lot of planning this year. To make up our shortfall this time we were fully prepared. But those preparations were not helpful to us in view of abrupt, illegal and politically motivated implementation of just one condition of Lyngdoh Committee. But despite that we have improved the vote percentage this year. But this is not the central point. The central point is how the elections are conducted and that was totally unfair. Shri Lyngdoh has also criticised this kind of implementation of his recommendations in DU.
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