DUSU Results: Should NSUI & AISA Have Contested Polls as INDIA? Experts Weigh In

The Quint spoke to experts to understand if the DUSU elections are a representation of the politics in India.

Winning three out of four seats, thrice in a row, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) continues to maintain its dominance in the Delhi University Students' Union (DUSU) elections.

ABVP's Tushar Dedha defeated his rival Hitesh Gulia from Congress' National Students' Union of India (NSUI) by 3,115 votes, becoming the next DUSU President.

The margin of victory, however, has significantly reduced as compared to the 2019 election results, where the then ABVP candidate won by over of 19,000 votes.

Despite the presence of the All India Students' Union (AISA) and Students Federation of India (SFI), this year too saw a straight contest between ABVP and NSUI. This comes despite the AISA's attempts to forge an alliance with the Opposition, including NSUI, to fight against the ABVP.

Would NSUI have fared better had they allied with AISA? Is the DUSU election a litmus test for 2024 Lok Sabha elections? The Quint spoke to experts to decode.

2019 vs 2023: A Comparison of Margin of Votes

According to senior journalist and political commentator Arati S Jerath, the reduced margin of votes in the presidential post was a "cause of concern for the ABVP".

"This might be due to anti-BJP sentiments amongst students, but it's hard to say," she told The Quint.

But the low margin of votes was only in the post of the president. ABVP's Aparajita and Sachin Baisla won the posts of Secretary and Joint Secretary respectively by defeating their counterparts in NSUI's by a margin of 12,937 and 9,995 votes respectively.

Meanwhile, NSUI’s Dahiya received 22,331 votes and defeated ABVP’s Sushant Dhankar by a margin of 1,829 votes.

Yashwant Deshmukh, Founder of CVoter, a election research polling agency, believed one cannot analyse the gains of Congress without understanding where the votes came from.

"If the NSUI's margin of votes reduced after receiving votes from ABVP's bank, then yes, its a gain. But if it gained from parties like AISA or SFI, then its technically a loss, because ABVP still has a stronger, untouched vote base," he explained.

Would A NSUI-AISA Alliance Have Worked? 

Ahead of the DUSU polls, the university was abuzz with talks of the NSUI, AISA and SFI forming an alliance, a lesson some student leaders said they have learnt from the coming together of Opposition parties – 'INDIA' alliance – against the BJP for the Lok Sabha polls.

Speaking to The Quint, a student leader at AISA said: "AISA gave a call for a broad alliance between all Opposition parties to come together against ABVP. But due to the reluctance from NSUI, Aam Aadmi Party's CYSS and their internal reasons, this could not take place."

Arati R Jerath said an alliance would not work for micro-level elections such as DUSU. There will be no meeting ground if there was an alliance, she believed.

"AISA’s politics is so different from NSUI’s. If they had joined hands, whatever little presence AISA had, would’ve been lost. This is because AISA's supporters would have been disillusioned when their radical party aligns with a bourgeoise party like NSUI," Jerath said.

Meanwhile, Soumodip Sinha said, an Assistant Professor in Bengaluru's Alliance University, whose PhD thesis was on 'Student Politics in Delhi University' said: "Each organisation has its own ideological goals and standpoints and a dedicated set of activists and sympathisers; so one can safely assume that it would not have helped much in such a short term."

Are DUSU Polls a Litmus Test?

Yashwant Deshmukh said that the BJP’s and Congress’ numbers in DU are a proxy for National Democratic Alliance’s (NDA) and United Progressive Alliance’s (UPA) national vote shares among students.

"DUSU used to be called a ‘semi-final’ of sorts ahead of the elections. That is why we started analysing it from a national perspective. But, that ceased to exist after the arrival of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). It was a bipolar contest between ABVP and NSUI for years now, similiar to the bipolar contest between the BJP and Congress in several parts of North India," Deskhmukh told The Quint.

However, Deshmukh admitted that a large section of students who study at DU comes from Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which is one of the main reasons why one cannot call it was a "representative of all of India."

Jerath believed that DUSU elections were a "representation of a mood in Delhi, rather than whole of India."

"Whenever ABVP has won in DUSU elections, BJP has done well in Delhi and when NSUI has won, Congress has done well. However, the entry of AAP has distorted this pattern. At present, it is a face-off between the Congress and BJP. But, the Congress' presence in Delhi is reducing and the real comparison of national representation of DUSU elections will happen only when AAP's student wing contests," Jerath said.

'DUSU Results Not A Microcosm Of National Mood'

While experts The Quint spoke to believed that DUSU results are a good indicator of the representation on a national-level, one cannot extrapolate and generalise it.

According to Jerath, "Just because DU has students all over India, one cannot say that election results are a microcosm of the national mood."

Tanvir Aeijaz, a political science professor at DU said that a "sweeping generalisation" cannot be made without analysing the mood across different universities in Delhi.

"It's true that students/youth play a huge role in out politics. But, any generalisation can take place only if you consider the results of student union elections at places such as Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). To connect it to Lok Sabha elections is a bit of a stretch," Aeijaz believed.

Deshmukh too drew a comparison between JNU and DU. "While DU is considered as 'cosmopolitan', it isn't as much as JNU, which has more representation from across India. DU is much more reflective of North India," he told The Quint.

To add on, Sinha said that, since the last two decades, locally dominant castes have been largely assertive and have used their mobilisation strategies to contest on at least three out of four central posts every occasion.

Whether You Like It Or Not, DUSU Elections Matter

From agitating against Indira Gandhi's Emergency rule to challenging a sitting government during Mandal Commission, Delhi University has always been a burning pot of issues, agitations, solutions, and an eye of national politics.

Over the years, the DUSU elections have made a significant impact on India's national politics with leaders such as Arun Jaitley, Ajay Maken, Vijay Goel emerging from the union.

According to Sinha, DUSU elections have been "prime makers" of political socialisation and aspirations for the larger student community due to the university's rich history and legacy.

All the last five DUSU elections have correctly pointed towards the Lok Sabha election results, experts told The Quint.

Digvijay Singh, Assistant Professor at DU and Founder-Director of House of Political Empowerment (HoPE) Research and Innovation Foundation, said this is because the university has over 1.3 lakh students drawn from all over the country, speaking every language, following every custom, thereby representing all parts of the country.

"DUSU elections helps us gauge the mood of young India. It is a litmus test for both the Congress and BJP to understand what the youth is thinking and what ideology they support. This is the reason why the top leadership of the BJP and the Congress is usually involved in the strategy, planning and campaigning for DUSU polls," Singh told The Quint.

"Being one of the largest (and one of the few) student union elections in the country at present, there is merit in stating that it reflects a mosaic of the larger picture and states the mood of the nation. Although the central posts are generally won by local candidates from Delhi, neighbouring Haryana or Western UP – the popular focus on it and the magnitude of this election does set the stage for the general elections," Sinha further added.