NSUI to contact student voters ahead of LS polls
NEW DELHI: The Congress’ students’ wing, National Students Union of India (NSUI), has launched “behtar bharat” — a campaign aimed at mobilising young voters from across the country ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
With the campaign, the students’ organisation is targeting to gain access to around 15,000 higher educational institutions across the country, with at least more than 1,000 students in each of the institute, over the next five months. As part of the campaign, which was launched at Andhra University in Vishakhapatnam last week, the NSUI plans to appoint “behtar bharat ambassadors” in each of these colleges and universities to work as “foot soldiers” of the party.
In Delhi, the campaign will be launched in 110 educational institutions, including the 93 Delhi University colleges, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and Jamia Millia Islamia among others by members of the Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) panel in January.
“It’s high time for us to encourage the youth to actively participate in national politics. We will make students aware about the Congress’ plan for them and encourage them to come out and vote in the 2019 general elections,” said Akshay Lakra, NSUI Delhi president.
NSUI national i n-charge Ruchi Gupta said, “The campaign is travelling to over 15,000 higher educational institutions across the country where NSUI units have presence. We are appointing campaign ambassadors in each of these colleges and universities. The ambassadors — who will directly interact with students and discuss their issues — will be given a target to encourage more students to join NSUI and register as first-time voters from their institutions.”
Simultaneously, the ambassadors will organise “behtar bharat interactions “on their respective campuses”.
“For these interactions, top Congress leaders, including party president Rahul Gandhi and other senior leaders such as P Chidambaram, Prithviraj Chavan, Harish Rawat and Jai Ram Ramesh, will travel to these colleges and universities. The leaders will discuss students’ issues and put forward party’s 2019 election agendas for students such as setting up of a “student’s rights commission”, ending selffinanced courses in public universities, reducing fee structures and providing equal education opportunities to everyone,” Gupta said.
Maintaining that the idea behind the campaign is to bring students’ issues on the national agenda for the 2019 general elections, she said: “In the last one year, the NSUI has travelled to thousands of educational institutions and interacted with students. We have realised that the students across the country are disgruntled and they feel that their issues are not on the priority list of the present regime. But the Congress party wants to tell them that their issues are our top priority and it is our responsibility to address them,” she said.