DUSU Elections 2015: Caste fillip works in student elections too?

Not much different from the Lok Sabha elections or any other assembly elections, student elections in Delhi University are more or less the same, where student outfits just like political parties opt to go for caste fillip to appease their electorate.

Iamin tried to analyse the choice of candidates pitched for various positions by Bharatiya Janta Party's student wing – Akhil Bharatiya Vishwa Parishad and National Student Union of India, student organisation of Congress in the past couple of years, and an interesting observation came to the fore that most of the candidates either belonged to Jaat or Gujjar community.

Consequently, the DUSU presidents who have been chosen all these years belonged to either of the communities. While ABVP's Mohit Nagar who was chosen as DUSU president last year was a Gujjar leader, Gujjar candidate from same student organisation Aman Awana was chosen the year before. Similarly, NSUI's Jaat president Arun Hooda served for the academic year 2012-2011, its Jaat President Ajay Chikara served the year before. For the year 2010-2011, DUSU again had a Gujjar President Jitendra Chaudhary from ABVP.

This year also, the trend seems to be the same. Making a debut this election, AAP's student wing Chhatra Yuva Sangarsh Samiti (CYSS) also tried to maintain a fine balance of Jat and Gujjar candidates as it announced its list on Sunday. While Garima Rana of Hindu College is a Jaat candidate, Kuldeep Bidhuri of PGDAV (Morning) is a Gujjar candidate.

(Also read: CYSS announces candidates for DUSU Polls)

Observers are of the view that apart from factors such as muscle and money power, the caste-card works because of the 'empathy-factor' that works out between students and leaders from the same community.

In the meantime, party insiders have told iamin that ABVP is also planning to pitch two Gujjar and one Jaat candidate this election season. The organisation representatives who are likely to make it to the list are: Satendra Awana (Gujjar candidate), Abhisek Verma, Sunny Dhedha (Gujjar candidate), Ankur Dhama, Rohit Rana, Yash Shaukeen, Sagar Chaudhary.

For the longer version of the report, click here