Ambedkar varsity student union polls on Wednesday

The student union elections at Ambedkar University on Wednesday will see a triangular fight between the RSS-affiliated ABVP and Left student outfits SFI and AISA.

This is the second year of the students' union polls in the varsity.

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad's (ABVP) unit at the university was set up almost two months ago and the outfit has fielded candidates for the posts of councillors at BA programmes.

The All India Students' Association (AISA) is contesting 10 councillor posts whereas last year it had contested on two posts, both of which it had won.

According to a functionary of Students' Federation of India (SFI), the AISA has fielded candidates against them on some seats.

"In JNU, the outfits (AISA and SFI) have an alliance while in Delhi University, we had appealed this year that all the left outfits should fight the polls together. The AISA did not approach us for an alliance in Ambedkar University, he said.

He also claimed their candidates been elected unopposed on some of the seats.

The elections in the Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD), scheduled for September 25, are being conducted by Election Committees formed by students as per the varsity's constitution of the Students' Union.

Candidates are contesting for the posts of Class Representatives at the Class level and Councillor at the Programme level. This implies that students shall cast their votes only for candidates contesting elections in their programmes.

The AUDSU Constitution mandates that there shall be one Class Representative (CR) for every class of 50 students and two CRs shall be elected if the strength exceeds more than 50. However, there shall be only one Councillor per programme.

Collectively, CRs and Councillors will function at the University level (Student Council) and the School level (School-level Class Representatives' Committee).

This model is different from other universities, as per the vision of the first Student Council, which wanted to implement a horizontal representative model, rather than a hierarchical one, the varsity said.

On Monday, the Councillors' Debate, which is a prerequisite for contesting elections, was organised. As per information shared by Election Committees of three campuses a total of 92 nominations (for both Class Representative and Councillor posts) were filed.

The university had held its Students' Council elections in 2016 but there was opposition from some sections who felt they were not adhering to norms. Even though 28 representatives were elected, no union was formed.