Another Nitish Kumar of Bihar rises — this time in JNU as its Student Union President
JNUSU President Nitish Kumar: From a humble family in Bihar, Nitish Kumar, who joined JNU in 2020 for a Master’s degree, emerged as a key organiser of the ‘Reopen JNU’ movement in 2021.
4 min read
AISA-DSF president candidate for the JNU Students’ Union (JNUSU) elections Nitish Kumar speaks during the presidential debate, at JNU Campus in New Delhi on Wednesday. (Source: ANI Photo)JNUSU New President News: For Nitish Kumar, the newly elected president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union (JNUSU), the immediate task ahead is clear — restoring the spirit of inclusive public education on campus.
In a closely fought JNUSU elections, the Left alliance of the All India Students’ Association and Democratic Students’ Front (AISA-DSF) won three of the four central panel positions. The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) won one post. Kumar of the AISA was declared the JNUSU president, DSF’s Manisha was elected vice-president, Munteha, also from DSF, won the post of general secretary, and Vaibhav Meena of the ABVP was elected joint secretary.
Speaking to The Indian Express Sunday, Kumar said, “The first thing I will work on is pushing for bringing more funding into JNU. There have been a lot of funding cuts over the past few years. I will work towards bettering the infrastructure of the university. We will also work towards bringing back the JNUEE exam for admissions, push for the eradication of the CPO manual, which imposes fines on students for dissent and protests, and push for women students to get single-seater accommodation in the second year itself.”
Referring to the rise of the ABVP on campus, Kumar added, “The last time the ABVP entered the panel in 2015-16, JNU suffered an image of anti-nationalism. This time, we as a union will not let that happen.”
Kumar, 26, is a third-year PhD student at the Centre for Political Studies, School of Social Sciences. His political journey, however, began long before his doctoral research — rooted deeply in the lived experiences of India’s marginalised communities. According to a statement released by the United Left panel, “Nitish Kumar carries with him the lived experiences of India’s oppressed communities.”
Hailing from a humble OBC family in Sheikhpura of Bihar’s Araria district, Kumar grew up amid the agricultural hardships of rural India — his father is a farmer, and his mother a homemaker. The Left panel statement added during his schooling at Saraswati Shishu Vidya Mandir in Forbesganj, he “first witnessed and understood the sinister nature of communal fascism penetrating educational spaces.”
After completing his BA in Political Science from Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Kumar joined JNU in 2020 for a Master’s degree. His arrival coincided with what the party called “one of the most challenging periods for public education in India — the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath,” accusing the JNU administration of “systematically excluding economically disadvantaged students from accessing education” through prolonged campus closures.
During this phase, Kumar emerged as a key organiser of the ‘Reopen JNU’ movement in 2021, mobilising students across departments to demand the resumption of offline classes, hostel allotments, and access to university facilities.
In August 2023, he sat on a 16-day hunger strike demanding solutions to the acute hostel crisis — a protest that became a watershed moment in JNU’s student mobilisation. As Secretary of the All India Students’ Association (AISA) JNU unit, Kumar also led campaigns for raising fellowship amounts, reinstating entrance exams, and opposing politically influenced faculty appointments.
His political work, the United Left Panel said, has been consistently anchored in “making JNU accessible and equitable for students from working-class, OBC, Dalit, and minority backgrounds.”
You May Like
Photos
