Student organisations look to carry Jantar Mantar momentum into DUSU election

With the Jantar Mantar protest drawing to a close, student organisations are preparing to shift their campaign from the protest site to the Delhi University campus as the new academic session begins on Tuesday.

The networking, visibility, and political momentum built during the 36-day agitation at Jantar Mantar, led by students and the Cockroach Janta Party over the NEET paper leak case, are likely to shape their outreach ahead of the DU Students’ Union (DUSU) elections. The polls are due to be held six to eight weeks after the commencement of the session, in accordance with the Lyngdoh Committee guidelines.

What set this year’s outreach apart was that it began well before the academic session. At Jantar Mantar, student organisations picked up incoming DU students from railway stations, helped them reach the protest site, distributed food and water, managed logistics, and addressed gatherings, combining political mobilisation with assistance typically associated with the DUSU election season.

Multiple student organisations maintained a visible presence at the protest site through tents and help desks. Leaders of the All India Students’ Association (AISA) emerged as prominent faces during the hunger strike, while the All India Students’ Federation ran a bookstall at the centre of the site. Volunteers from Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) Association of Students for Alternative Politics (ASAP), the Krantikari Yuva Sangathan and the Students’ Federation of India helped manage logistics.

The Congress-backed National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) publicly joined the protest after the alleged police violence during the July 20 protest march to Parliament. The only prominent student organisation absent from the site was the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), which said it was working for reform on campus and was present where it “needed to be”.

At present, three of the four DUSU office-bearers, including president Aryan Mann, are from the ABVP. One is from the NSUI. However, student organisations claimed that the “clear student anger against the Right” would change the course of the upcoming election.

Anjali, an AISA leader and DU student who emerged as one of the prominent faces of the protest, said, “Some of the most important issues in the country were raised at Jantar Mantar. We have anyway been raising issues about the National Education Policy (NEP), 2020. We will definitely centre our DUSU campaign around this.”

In the long run, AISA intends to “tap into the resistance and understand what caused so much anger”, she said.

NSUI national president Vinod Jakhar said the organisation had initially launched its own movement and was mobilising students across the country over the NEET paper leak issue.

“We did not get permission at Jantar Mantar, so we supported the movement in the background. Eventually, after the police violence, we joined because it was not about one organisation; it was about the students,” he said, adding that the organisation was simultaneously setting up help desks to assist students with hostel-related and other campus issues.

Sources in AAP said its students’ organisation would contest the election this year.

“There is a lot of anti-BJP sentiment among students. There will be a cultural shift in the upcoming student elections,” a source said, adding that ASAP teams had played a “significant role” at Jantar Mantar in providing security, distributing food and water, and managing the stage.

Meanwhile, the ABVP argued that it had been equally active on the issue of educational reform.

“We conducted the first major NEET protest outside the National Testing Agency (NTA), and we were looking at solutions beyond a resignation. We were thinking practically, not politically,” an ABVP member said, requesting anonymity.

He added, “Students know that we were where we needed to be: on campus. We could not join such a movement because anti-national elements were present.”