JNU: Left vs Right contest heats up in poll season

At around 7:30 pm on an unusually cold March day, a group of students sat on stone blocks at the Jawaharlal Nehru University’s iconic Ganga dhaba and discussed issues that will impact their voting choices in the upcoming general elections. While most sessions and protests organised by the left student groups — All India Students Association, Students Federation of India, Democratic Students Federation and All India Students Federation — revolve around the criticisms of Narendra Modi’s government, such as lack of jobs, privatisation of public education, and farmer suicides, those organised by the RSS-affiliated Akhil Bhartiya Vidhayarthi Parishad highlight nationalism, the surgical strike, thePulwama terror attack, and the “success of Modi government policies.” After “anti-national” event JNU sprang to national attention in 2016 when various police complaints were filed alleging that during a protest organised at the campus on February 9 against the execution of Afzal Guru, the mastermind of 2001 parliament attacks who was hanged in 2013, anti-national slogans were raised. “JNU students have been at the receiving end ever since this government came to power,” said Shehla Rashid, 30, a PhD student at JNU who was also named in the February 2016 incident charge sheet. N Sai Balaji, president of JNU students’ union and a member of AISA, said that the university has been “targeted” every single day after February 2016. How can we buy the government’s claims that it has improved education when scholars are struggling for basic necessities, and youth are not getting jobs?” SFI member and JNU students’ union general secretary Aejaz Rather said that the university has undergone a “series of changes” post 2016.