ABVP sweeps DUSU polls by winning President, 2 posts; NSUI gets VP

New Delhi: The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, on Friday wrested the President’s position from the Congress-backed National Students’ Union of India (NSUI), as Aryan Maan bagged the top post and two of his party colleagues won the seats of Secretary and Joint Secretary.

Rahul Jhansla of the NSUI claimed the Vice President’s position. The ABVP’s other two victorious candidates are Kunal Chaudhary (Secretary) and Deepika Jha (Joint Secretary).

The new DUSU President-elect Aryan Maan secured 28,841 votes as compared to the NSUI candidates Joslyn Nandita Choudhary’s 12,645 votes. He will take over the top job from the NSUI’s Ronak Khatri who won the post last year.

As the counting of votes ended on Friday, for the Vice President’s post the NSUI got 29,339 votes and the ABVP got 20,547 votes. For the Secretary’s post, the ABVP secured 23,779 votes and the NSUI got 16,177. In the contest for the Joint Secretary’s job the ABVP got 21,825 votes and the NSUI secured 17,380 votes.

Over 1.55 lakh students voted on Thursday in the Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) election, a contest marred by allegations of violence and rigging.

What set apart the 2025 DUSU polls was the prominence of women candidates in the race for the top post, a development the campus has not seen in almost two decades. ABVP’s Nupur Sharma was the last woman to hold the DUSU President’s office in 2008-09.

On Thursday, voting was held in two shifts – morning and evening. The morning phase started at 8.30 A.M. at a sluggish pace but picked up pace at polling stations and departments before ending at 1 P.M. In the evening, voting took place between 3 P.M. and 7.30 P.M. at eight colleges.

The total turnout was clocked at 39.45 per cent at all the 52 centres with 195 booths equipped with 711 EVMs. Over 2.75 lakh students, from more than 50 colleges of Delhi University, were eligible to vote in DUSU elections.

There were nine candidates in the fray for the DUSU President’s position. There were 12 candidates in the contest for the other three posts of Vice President, Secretary and Joint Secretary.

The NSUI Presidential candidate Joslyn Nandita Choudhary, a postgraduate student of Buddhist Studies, had focussed her campaign on hostel shortage, campus safety and the demand for menstrual leave.

The SFI-AISA combine nominated Anjali, a student of Indraprastha College for Women, for the President’s post and she campaigned on issues of gender sensitisation, fee hikes and the restoration of grievance redressal mechanisms.

IANS