The
Tribune: Chandigarh: Friday, August 30, 2019.
Fashioning
Panjab University’s (PU’s) election panel with “inclusivity and diversity”, two
student parties National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) and Communist Party of
India (Marxist)-affiliated SFI (Students’ Federation of India) have for the
first time fielded candidates from South India and the Northeast on PU campus.
The
two 22-year-old firebrands Nikhil Narmeta of Telangana from the NSUI and
Abhilash Rajkhowa of Assam from the SFI have one thing in common: both of them
have been in the thick of political activism since they were teenagers.
Contesting for the president’s post, Narmeta, a BTech student at the UIET,
said: “I have been associated with the Telangana movement since I was in Class
VII and was part of it for 12 or 13 years that’s my provocation for entering
politics. Also, I come from a humble background; my mother is a homemaker and
father a salesman. I have also suffered the pangs of poverty.”
The
insurgency period in Assam fanned Rajkhowa’s political leanings. “All my family
members are bookworms. My father is a lecturer at a government college in
Pitabar, my hometown, which is located on Assam-Nagaland border. I have seen
curfews and bloodshed all my life and I resent it,” he said. Talking about his
political affiliation, Abhilash Rajkhowa, who is a student at the Department of
Ancient Indian History, Culture & Archaeology, shared: “I am a
newspaper-buff. So, I am already in the know of the political scene in my
country. I went to Guwahati for studying at Cotton University where I
identified my political leaning; I am a Marxist and I feel a revolution cannot
be brought about by bloodshed and imperialism, but by electoral process,” he
shared.
Both,
Abhilash and Nikhil, peg the merit of their nominations on the essence of a
democratic nation inclusion and diversity. While Abhilash Rajkhowa, as a
north-eastern student thinks the party ticket will help him assert his
identity, Nikhil Narmeta says his party stemmed from the roots of socialism.
“That I am a PU student and an Indian, I qualify for my candidature in the
present elections. I’ve also been filing queries under the RTI Act and
memorandums for student issues here. Our party believes in inclusion. The PU
was conceived and founded on the principles of egalitarianism, rationalism,
social justice and the other fundamental tenets of the Indian Constitution.
Today, these values are under attack. Students will have a clear choice between
democratic values, the idea of the PU, and the idea of India versus
authoritarianism, xenophobia, corruption and money-muscle power of the combined
weight of the political elites, like ‘Sangh pariwar’,” said Rajkhowa.
Nikhil
Narmeta shares: “I am totally against the atmosphere of hate and fear that has
invaded the country. I have been working in the PU for issues like ‘Earn while
One Learns’ and have been actively addressing the issues faced by the students
of the south campus. That I have been given a ticket from the NSUI shows that
my party respects the diversity on campus and in the country, both.”
Muslim
women to represent PU’s Department of Laws
- Both the NSUI and SFI have fielded Muslim women as the representatives from the Department of Laws. From the SFI, Shabana (23) who is a final-year student of the department, said: “The SFI respects people of beyond the barriers of religion and gender. I know there are many stereotypes associated with my religion, a burka for instance, but I am here to fight it out. My family gives me all the support I need.”
- NSUI’s Benazir Khurshid, who is also from the Department of Laws, said: “For my party, humanity is the only religion. I am going to address several issues in our department, from internship and placements to sanitation.”
.JPG)
.JPG)
