New Delhi: Student election fever has gripped the entire North Campus of Delhi University (DU) as posters and names of candidates have covered walls, advertising spaces at bus shelters and market places. The campus is abuzz with hectic activity with candidates trying to woo students with pamphlets and scribbles.
Though the DU students’ union (Dusu) elections are scheduled for September, the contesters have already started to spray-paint their names and put up posters across the campus in order to make their names visible and known much before the three-day campaigning begins.
While the RSS affiliated Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) leaders and National Students’ Union of India (NSUI), the student wing of the Congress, are using various methods for pre-campaigning, the left wing All India Students’ Association (AISA), like the previous years, maintained that it doesn’t indulge in “this kind of politics”.
“These posters just carry their names without addressing any of the students’ issues. It’s just another way to make students learn their names,” AISA president Kawalpreet Kaur said.
She lamented over “no action being taken against any of these people” for wasting so much of paper. “Year after year, they keep doing the same thing. We are going to complain and request the university to issue certain guidelines about it.”
Last year, the National Green Tribunal’s order directing the university to ensure that no paper is used for campaigning on campuses, had compelled student parties to take the war on social media but littering on the campus still continues. However, the ABVP and the NSUI said that they would ensure that the amount of paper used in campaigning is reduced this year.
“This is the traditional way of politics in DU. Candidates do it every year by themselves (without any involvement from the party). We will try going paperless this time so that that walls are not wrecked,” said NSUI national president Fairoz Khan.
ABVP spokesperson Saket Bahuguna stressed that the “short” three-day campaigning period is not sufficient to reach out to the students of 50 colleges who vote on one day and thus posters happen to be an effective medium.
