A Clean Sweep For SFI In Pondicherry University
Junaid Nazar
After the Modi government taking up the ministry, we have seen a concentrated effort to dismantle the public funded university. From seat cut to fund cut, they found one after another way to stop the road to higher education for the marginalised students of our country. The plan is simple, let the “prestigious” institutions be the “agrahara” of upper caste upper class boys who can “buy” the education with their accumulated wealth of centuries, pushing the working class to further margin. The institutional murder of Rohit Vemula or forceful disappearance of Najeeb Ahmed is still fresh our memory, we have witnessed with our lives how even making it inside a university too didn’t guarantee a safe secure life to the Dalit Bahujan, the Manuvadi Government and their stooges in the disguise of ABVP made it impossible for any education institution to run on the basis of scientific thinking and secular ideology. In case of Pondicherry also the situation was no exception the increasing right wing dominance inside the student body was definitely a matter of worry. The fight was also against the previous elected Students Council, formed with people from variant ideology which ended up in a rainbow alliance, including the right wing organization which had completely failed to take up the basic students’ issues or run an effective union per se. In the previous election, even although SFI as an organisation with most school representatives but because of the opportunistic alliance to defeat SFI, we could not form a Union.
From the beginning of this year we were careful to only get the numeric majority but to form an ideological resistance against the hollow politics of the right-wing. We were affirmed that no matter what the killers of Abhimanyu and those silent supporter of these fundamentalist force won’t be given any space to do their venomous politics. It was not an easy task, SFI had faced many challenges during this election. There were slandering and secret alliances between parties in some departments just to defeat us. Rumour mongering, spreading fake news and lies were used by these forces to alienate students from SFI. But it was only the strength of our political commitment that all these efforts went in vain. SFI emerged victorious, winning 10 out of the 11 Council positions in the Students’ Council Election of Pondicherry University 2018-19.
The election to the Council was conducted in two phases. The first phase, where the school representatives are elected was held on 24th October 2018. There was a total of 77 seats from Pondicherry University campus, Karaikkal campus, Port Blair campus and Community Colleges in Mahe and Puducherry. We contested in 41 seats out of 71 positions where elections were held and emerged victorious in 26 seats. SFI clean swept major schools like School of Social Sciences and School of Management and campuses like Mahe and Port Blair.
In the second phase of election held on 27th October 2018 to elect the council representatives, SFI bagged 10 out of total 11 council seats. In the second phase elections, the progressive individuals and alliances extended their support and backed SFI in the fight against right wing alliance. Along with me as the President of the Students’ Council. Com. P. Siva Rama Krishna as the General Secretary. Com. Shonima and Com. Sugadev as Vice Presidents were elected. SFI also carved its place in the history of Pondicherry University by becoming the first organisation to win the Students’ Council election alone. The huge victory and support the SFI gained shows the political awareness the campus is gaining and was a strong reply to the money power politics that has been in the campus which SFI had been fighting alone since a long time.
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