The Samajwadi Party’s student wing wins four posts; ABVP wins General Secretary post

The student wing of the Samajwadi Party swept the Allahabad University Student Union election this year, winning four out of the five posts.

The results were declared late on Saturday.

The Samajwadi Chhatra Sabha (SCS) secured the post of President, Vice-President, Joint Secretary and Cultural Secretary of the central varsity.

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the RSS-BJP, received a consolation in the form of the General Secretary post.

The swing in favour of the SCS translated to a loss of ground for the ABVP, which had done remarkably well over the last two elections in a university traditionally dominated by socialist-leftist parties. In 2015, the ABVP secured four out five spots, barring the President's post.

Continuing its good run, in 2016, it had won the post of President and Joint Secretary, setting the tone for a BJP win in the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly election a few months later.

This time, the SCS scripted a major victory with its candidate Avanish Kumar Yadav elected as President. Mr. Yadav secured an impressive 3226 votes, beating his nearest rival Mrityunjay Rao Parmar by 552 votes. The ABVP's Priyanka Singh stood a distant third with 1588 votes.

The SCS had to fight harder for the post of Vice-President as its nominee Chandrashekhar Chaudhary, who secured 2249 votes, defeated Shivam Kumar Tiwari of the ABVP by a thin margin of 72. Vijay Singh Baghel of the National Students' Union of India, the student wing of the Congress, stood third with 1661 votes.

The ABVP managed to secure the post of General Secretary by a slender margin of 62. The ABVP's Nirbhay Kumar Dwivedi, who won 2132 votes, beat out the challenge from Arpit Singh "Rajkumar" of NSUI while Rohit Kumar Yadav of SCS finished third, 122 votes behind the runner-up.

Bharat Singh of the SCS was elected as the Joint Secretary with 2051 votes, defeating Adarsh Shukla by 630 votes. Chandan Kumar "Chandu" stood third with 1299 votes, while the NSUI and ABVP candidates finished fourth and fifth for the post.

It was a high scoring two-way contest for the post of Cultural Secretary as Awadesh Kumar Patel "Shanu" of the SCS defeated Abhishek Kumar Awasthi "Kavi Deepak" of the ABVP. While Shanu secured 3801 votes, Kavi Deepak received 2889. Harikesh Kumar "Harry Bhai" stood third with 716 votes.

A total of 1609 votes for the five categories were registered under the NOTA.

Ever since the restoration of the AUSU, the SCS has dominated the elections, winning in 2012, 2014 and 2015, when it supported Richa Singh, an independent who later joined the SP and even fought the UP Assembly polls, and now in 2017.

Ms. Singh created history in 2015 when she became the first female president since independence, and perhaps only the second in history of the university. In 2012, Shalu Yadav had become the first girl student to be elected Vice-President in 28 years. However, over the last two years few female candidates have been in the running. In fact, among the 15 total candidates fielded by the SCS, ABVP and NSUI, only one, Priyanka Singh (of ABVP), was female.