AAP’s student wing won’t contest polls for second year, cites Assembly elections

On why CYSS has been opting out of DUSU polls, Tiwari said, “Last year, we faced a setback in the Panjab University student council elections, which hurt our image. To avoid a similar situation, we decided not to contest the DUSU elections again this year.”

The CYSS last made a visible mark on the DU campus politics in April, during protests against the arrest of former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal in the excise policy case. The arrest on March 8 had prompted CYSS to organise a “Mashal March” in North Campus.

CYSS state general secretary Kuldeep said the outfit’s absence from elections post-pandemic was not a withdrawal from student activism but a result of “internal decisions”. Despite sitting out the last two DUSU elections, Tiwari noted that CYSS maintains influence at colleges with several elected candidates committed to addressing student concerns.

Since its formation in 2013, CYSS has seen fluctuating success at DU. It first contested DUSU elections in 2015 but was soundly defeated by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), which swept all four central panel positions. Despite AAP’s resounding victory in the previous Delhi Assembly polls, CYSS failed to gain a foothold. The gap between ABVP’s winning candidate, Sunny Dedha, and CYSS’s Garima Rana was a significant 7,570 votes.

Blaming “money and muscle power” wielded by ABVP, the CYSS stayed out of the 2016 and 2017 DUSU polls. It returned in 2018 through an alliance with the All India Students Association (AISA). However, the coalition failed to secure any central panel positions, with combined votes trailing behind ABVP’s total votes.

In contrast, the CYSS experienced success in Rajasthan’s 2017 student body polls, winning several college presidency seats. It also won the Panjab University Campus Student Council (PUCSC) presidency in 2022. However, it lost this seat to the Congress-backed National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) the following year, marking a downturn in its fortunes.