Student council elections: Not just in Punjab, Cong’s student wing in PU also a house divided

Akashdeep Virk

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, August 8

It has been years since Indian National Congress’ student wing NSUI has been riddled with internal factionalism in Panjab University (PU) here. Even as the party is putting up a united face as of now, it is divided internally, which is most likely to dent its performance in the PU Campus Student Council (PUCSC) elections scheduled for early September.

Just like the state Congress members are believed to have allegiance to either MLA Partap Singh Bajwa or MP Amrinder Singh Raja Warring group, the campus NSUI leaders are linked to the Sachin Galav or Manoj Lubana groups, the prominent among few.

“In fact, there is a race after elections to take the winning NSUI candidate to Congress leaders. Since the candidates are generally dummy, the leaders are in a hurry to take the winning candidate to their favourite Congress leader, get a picture clicked and score brownie points by claiming to have supported the candidate,” said a senior NSUI leader.

Galav is currently a councillor in the Chandigarh MC and also the city NSUI president. He had been the NSUI PU president. Lubana was one of the first members to join NSUI at the campus and secure its win in the 2013 elections. Before joining the NSUI, he was part of SOPU and had remained its president in 2013.

The NSUI registered its first win in the PU in 2013 by defeating SOPU and PUSU, who had been dominating the council for years. Its candidate Chandan Rana had won the president’s post by a margin of 838 votes while another NSUI candidate Sunny Mehta had won the joint secretary’s post by a margin of 50 votes. The party made a comeback in 2017 by winning three posts — Jashan Kamboj as president, Karanvir Singh as vice-president and Vani Sood as secretary.

Later, the party could only manage to win after a gap of six years in 2023. Then, the Congress-backed party had only contested for president’s post and won it.

Jatinder Singh, the elected president, was a turncoat who had quit ABVP just eight days before the poll. Student leaders on the campus believe that after the party could not manage to bring a seasoned NSUI face as presidential candidate, the Chandigarh NSUI in-charge Kanhaiya Kumar had handpicked Jatinder. “He was part of ABVP for nearly eight years. The party could not manage to find a face amongst its own and picked him. This is what factionalism does. Nobody emerges as a leader,” said a campus NSUI leader.

The party only manages to unite as one during the final leg of elections when strings are pulled by a senior NSUI leader sent to Chandigarh by the Congress. Last year, it was Kanhaiya Kumar while this year, NSUI secretary Dilip Chaudhary has been appointed as Chandigarh NSUI in-charge. Chaudhary has claimed that the party is united on the campus and there was no division.

Accepting that the student party has suffered at the hands of factionalism, Galav said, “Despite groupism, we managed to win the PUCSC president’s seat when the party failed to register a victory anywhere else in the country. Factionalism is a part of politics. Our organisation is spread across the nation and in such a large family, someone or the other remains upset over something.”