Buoyed by the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) election results in which an unprecedented alliance between the CPM’s student wing, the Students’ Federation of India (SFI) and the CPI(ML)-affiliated All India Students’ Association (AISA) emerged victorious, the Congress and CPM are expected to join hands in the upcoming college elections across the state, slated to begin in November. In JNU, the SFI-AISA alliance beat the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), BJP’s student wing, by a comfortable margin. Senior members of both Congress and CPM student unions hinted that they might team up. “There is a possibility that we might get into an alliance with Chhatra Parishad (Congress’ student wing) but there have to be several rounds of meetings in this regard and many logistics need to be discussed before a decision is made,” Madhuja Sen Roy, SFI state president, told The Indian Express. Asked if she was skeptical after the dismal performance of the Congress-Left alliance in the last Assembly elections, she said, “Assembly elections and student union elections are not the same.” Ashutosh Chatterjee, president of Chhatra Parishad, said, “We are in a comfortable position across the state and I will be attending several meetings at the district level to ascertain the views of party workers. Besides, there will be state-level meetings and a meeting with the Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC). By the end of this month or halfway through next month at most, we will be in a position to say something concrete. No possibilities are being ruled out,” he told The Indian Express. The SFI leadership at JNU also agreed that there should be a “fight of united forces” in Bengal. “Although I am not authorised to comment on what the decision would be, I believe it is the need of the hour for all the Left and other democratic and secular unions to unite against all communist and fascist forces,” said Dipsita Dhar, a senior SFI leader of JNU. She added that though SFI had secured enough seats independently and didn’t need the alliance, the issue was so strong that all Left unions had come together. “It was not a mission to defeat the ABVP but an emotion to unite against fascist forces,” she said.
