WEST BENGAL: NO CLASS POLITICS
Mamata mulls ban on youth wings of political parties fighting student body polls in colleges
If Mamata Banerjee has her way, university and college elections will no longer be the raucous, sometimes violent occasions they are in West Bengal. The chief minister is seriously considering a ban on student wings of political parties participating directly in elections to student bodies.
State education minister Partha Chatterjee says all government-run and government-aided institutions will henceforth emulate St Xavier’s University’s ‘apolitical’ model for student council elections. Xavier’s, like other reputed institutions, including Lady Brabourne College, Loreto College, IIT Kharagpur and Shibpur’s Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, doesn’t permit elections among student political organisations. Polls are contested between student societies like the Bengali Literary Society, Hindi Literary Society and Theatrical Society.
It’s a drastic shift in Bengal, where the student wing of the
MAMATA AND SOME OF HER COLLEAGUES FEEL COLLEGE POLL VIOLENCE IS EARNING THE TMC A BAD NAME
party in power has traditionally controlled the student unions. Through the years of Left Front rule, over 80 per cent of student bodies were held by the Students Federation of India (SFI) and other left outfits. With the Trinamool Congress at the helm, 450 of the 478 student bodies are controlled by the Trinamool Chhatra Parishad (TMCP).
The high-decibel student polls each year are invariably marred by violence, with political parties often entering the fray through local councillors and leaders. “They (political parties) pump in money, muscle power and fear,” says a student of Kolkata’s Ashutosh College, claiming that the “elections are neither free nor fair”.
In 2012, violence during elections at Harimohan Ghose College in Kolkata caused the death of a policeman. He was shot by goons reportedly close to the local TMC councillor. The councillor was arrested and student polls were banned for two years. But violence returned once elections resumed. Now, with the TMCP in power in most college unions and student councils, Mamata and many of her colleagues feel the violence is earning the party a bad name. The SFI, though, is strongly opposed to Mamata’s move. “College politics is a basic step in the education of young minds, in making them conscious and helping them align with the political ideology of their choice,” says SFI joint secretary Mayukh Biswas.
Many in the TMC and TMCP, too, are unhappy. A Calcutta University student leader argues that the TMCP, which has expanded its membership significantly, will suffer the most if the ban really comes into force.