The ruling Aam Aadmi Party’s student wing in Delhi has a tough task ahead in the Delhi University polls, where its opponents are quite ahead in terms of ‘money and muscle power’. Under these circumstances, the Chhatra Yuva Sangharsh Samiti (CYSS) is heavily relying on a ‘person-to-person’ campaign and social media.
Thus far, the student bodies of Congress and BJP, NSUI and ABVP have dominated the university polls in Delhi.
The ‘person-to-person’ campaign being used by CYSS is the same method that brought AAP to power in Delhi earlier this year through a virtual landslide election win.
CYSS’ state president Anupam Yadav says the group already has over 750 volunteers who have been contacting new DU students on a personal basis.
“Our aim is to make DUSU polls free from money and muscle power. We will do issue-based politics for student welfare. We have prepared an application form for those new members who would like to contest in the DUSU polls in future. The poll aspirants will be asked to provide personal details like their political and criminal background, if any, and their social networking IDs (Twitter, Facebook), apart from basic details,” Yadav said.
To acquire new members, the party will go through all the applications to select the most deserving candidates in a free and transparent manner.
Delhi University elections are notorious for the money and politics that is usually involved every time.
“Everyone knows that lakhs of rupees are spent during students’ union election in Delhi University every year. But instead of spending large sums of money, we will abide by the Lyngdoh Committee recommendations which say that every candidate can spend up to Rs.5,000 in student union polls,” Yadav said.
An anonymous member of a student group shared more input in this matter: “Students are shown the good life with DJs and rain-dance parties, free liquor and even movie tickets. These are all methods to make students fresh from school acquainted with the candidates.”
“DUSU elections are considered the nursery of national politics and major political parties like the Congress and BJP consider the poll results a sample survey of sorts for the mood in the country as DU colleges get students from all over the country. In fact, Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit would personally oversee poll arrangements for NSUI and so would the national leadership of BJP for the ABVP,” the student leader added.
AAP leaders Dilip Pandey and Alka Lamba had visited Delhi University last month in order to woo potential voters. However, they could not escape controversy as an incident of stone and egg-pelting had occurred during their visit then.