Delhi University Students Union (DUSU) 2016 results: ABVP sweeps poll, wins three seats including President's post

The ABVP continued their dominance in the Delhi University Student Elections. While the BJP’s student wing won 3 seats, the Congress-backed NSUI won one seat. While ABVP’s Amit Tanwar won the President’s seat, Priyanka Chabri was elected Vice President. Ankit Sangwan, also of the ABVP won the Secretary post. The NSUI’s Mohit Garid won the Joint Secretary seat. Student supporters had started gathering as early as 7 at the campus and the counting started around 7:30. The winning team was all smiles and distributed ladoos among students and supporters. According to Karan Kuhar,  a student of Daulat Ram college, plans are afoot to hold a "massive" victory procession

The run-up to the counting till the final results came out was a cocktail of various emotions for both NSUI and ABVP candidates as well as their supporters. Stress, anxiety, exhilaration, dejection, the campus experienced myriad feelings as and when numbers trickled in.

ABVP was leading from the beginning but two hours into the counting, arch rival NSUI claimed to win 33 out of 40 colleges, which sent shock waves in the ABVP camp.

This is for the consecutive third time the ABVP has emerged victorious in DU polls. While on the previous two occasions, it was a clean sweep across the panel, nearest rival NSUI did stake a claim on one of the seats this time.

Social media was abuzz with congratulatory messages to ABVP for sweeping DU polls this year as well, with most of them claiming it to be a triumph of nationalism. ABVP has been under severe criticism of late in another major varsity, JNU for 'saffronisation' of the campus but the north campus of DU on Saturday actually turned into a riot of saffron colour as the party thumped to victory.

Over 36 per cent of students exercised their franchise yesterday in the keenly contested Delhi University Students' Union (DUSU) polls with the voting percentage recording a dip of over 7 per cent from last year's overall turnout of 43.3 per cent. Meanwhile, the students council elections also took place in 44 colleges where Congress-affiliated National Students Union of India (NSUI) won the five-member panels in 33 colleges while the BJP's student wing Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parsihad (ABVP) emerged victorious in 11 colleges.

While DUSU is the representative body of the students from most colleges and faculties of the varsity, colleges have their individual students' councils. The Chief Election Officer for DUSU elections, D S Rawat, said the voting went off peacefully with 35.89 per cent of students casting their vote in the morning leg of polls.

"The polling which was conducted in two phases went off smoothly. The maximum turnout of 91 per cent was recorded at the Ayurvedic and Unani Tibbia College and the minimum was in Campus Law Centre II at 6.79 per cent," he said.

"Minor technical glitches were reported in Aurobindo College in the morning phase but was rectified within a few minutes," he added.

With inputs from Chhavi Bhatia ​