At the very moment Congress MP Rahul Gandhi was eliciting applause by engaging in mimicry with stand-up comic Pulkit Mani during the ‘Chhatron Ki Goonj’ event, the ABVP was celebrating beneath the statue of Swami Vivekananda at Delhi University’s North Campus.
However, when the results were declared on Saturday, the ABVP decisively trounced the NSUI. So, has Rahul Gandhi’s attempt to woo the youth through Chhatron Ki Goonj failed on his own turf? Let us try to understand this through the results. Essentially, the ‘Voice of Students’ fell silent upon reaching Delhi University. It failed to penetrate the caste-based politics of the university – something NSUI strategists had hoped it would do. This time, however, they tried a new experiment: fielding Dalit candidate Vijay Meena for president, Punjabi candidate Veer Chathrath for vice president, Jat candidate Namrata Chaudhary for secretary, and another Jat candidate, Gopal Chaudhary, for joint secretary. it sidelined Deepanshu Shaukeen, a student leader who had actively protested against the NEET exam and even marched barefoot over the Satya Niketan tragedy Although the NSUI vigorously raised issues concerning NEET and hostel shortage.
Until four days prior, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) had been fighting its toughest student union election since 2012 across both the North and South campuses. Looking at the figures, the NSUI had managed to win just one seat – the vice presidency – in the 2025 elections; this time, however, they were reduced to zero. In the 2025 elections, the NSUI fielded two Jat and two Gurjar candidates. While NOTA got 23,674 votes in the previous DUSU election, the count rose to 23,942 this time.
