Left Panel Wins Big in JNUTA Elections
Image for representational purpose only.
New Delhi: The Left Panel swept the Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers’ Association (JNUTA) elections that took place on Thursday. The panel won in every single post in the elections. The secretary candidate, Avinash Kumar, secured the highest number of votes, winning by a margin of 227 votes. The new President of JNUTA, Atul Sood, from the School of Social Sciences, won by a margin of 207 votes, defeating Milap Punia, who led the other panel. The total number of votes polled was 518.
The Right-wing panel, which had allegedly been hand-picked by the Vice Chancellor Jagadesh Kumar and was backed by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, was defeated by huge margins. The elections saw 91% polling, which is around the usual amount for JNUTA elections.
The Left panel went into the elections with the determination to ensure that the university is run in accordance with the JNU Act, and not according to the whims and fancies of certain entities, said a supporter.
While appealing for votes, the Left Panel had campaigned for ‘restoring the running’ of JNU. It said, “We seek your vote to fight a ‘national waste’ and restore the running of the university.” They had also raised several issues, like the absence of drinking water in the school buildings, the poor living conditions for the students, and the houses not being allotted despite lying vacant for months. They said that “JNUTA represents the collective will of the teachers not of the administration.”
The Left panel aggressively highlighted the multi-pronged attack on the university by the Sangh Parivar and its affiliates, and how the elected students, teachers, officers and statutory bodies were not being acknowledged by the administration, and how solidarity among students, teachers, and staff was being labeled as “provocation”.
The JNUTA has also been questioning the contradictions in the administration’s approach. On the one hand, the administration doesn’t pay heed to the lack of basic amenities, like drinking water and usable toilets in the campus, but on the other hand, it envisages spending crores on an online examination and to hasten the process of signing an MoU with the Ministry of Human Resource Development that would put the seal on privatisation.
Over the last four years, the JNUTA has consistently fought against the “undoing of the university.”
The victory in the elections will embolden our fight to save the university from Right-wing extremists, said a Left panel supporter.
Get the latest reports & analysis with people's perspective on Protests, movements & deep analytical videos, discussions of the current affairs in your Telegram app. Subscribe to NewsClick's Telegram channel & get Real-Time updates on stories, as they get published on our website.
