No seat but NSUI improves tally

THE FOUR CANDIDATES OF NSUI BAGGED 1,959 VOTES, WHICH IS MORE THAN DOUBLE OF THE PARTY’S LAST YR TALLY

NEWDELHI: Even though the Congress-backed National Students Union of India (NSUI) could not win a seat in the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) elections on Sunday, the student outfit managed to get significantly higher number of votes than last year.

The four candidates of NSUI bagged a total of 1,959 votes, which is more than double of the party’s last year’s tally of 728 votes. NSUI had received less votes than the NOTA (None of the above) in the last JNUSU polls.

NSUI’S presidential candidate, Vikas Yadav got 402 votes, 320 more than the last year’s candidate. For the post of vice-president, Lijy K Babu got 457 votes against the last year’s figure of 201. Similarly, for the posts of general secretary and joint secretary, the votes of the NSUI increased by 105 and 550 votes, respectively.

Calling it a “moral victory”, NSUI’S national in-charge Ruchi Gupta said, “Last year, NSUI polled half the votes polled for NOTA. However, this time our joint secretary candidate alone polled more votes than all our votes last year.”

The NSUI JNU coordinator, Sunny Mehta said that party’s efforts in raising campus-related issues have helped it get more votes. “We worked on the ground level with the students and raised their issues such as compulsory attendance, seat cut and deprivation points throughout the year. The support we have got is a testimony of our efforts,” he said.

In the Delhi University Students Union polls last week, NSUI bagged one seat (Secretary) of the four on the panel despite getting more number of total votes than last year.