As Ashok Gehlot-affiliated NSUI gets routed across Rajasthan, Sachin Pilot has last laugh in RUSU polls

The RUSU poll results was dubbed as a “moment of redemption” for Congress MLA affiliated to Pilot, Mukesh Bhakar, who was removed as the state Youth Congress chief during the 2020 political crisis, and for the then NSUI president Abhimanyu Poonia, who had resigned in solidarity with Pilot. The NSUI (National Students’ Union of India) is the student wing of the Congress party, whose state unit is currently packed with the loyalists of Gehlot, 71.

In the RUSU elections, the NSUI’s rebel candidate Nirmal Choudhary, a close confidant of MLA Bhakar, who contested as an Independent, won the president’s post by a thumping majority. His closest rival turned out to be another NSUI rebel and Independent candidate, Niharika Jorwal. The NSUI’s official candidate Ritu Barala came a distant third, ahead of the ABVP candidate who finished last. The NSUI’s disastrous performance made the RUSU’s presidential poll a contest between two Congress groups, both affiliated to Pilot.

Jorwal is the daughter of state tourism minister Murari Lal Meena, who is a staunch Pilot loyalist and an MLA from Dausa, the traditional stronghold of the Pilot family.

Both Bhakar and Meena were among the 18 rebel MLAs who had sided with Pilot in his rebellion against Gehlot and camped with him in Delhi and Haryana for over a month during July-August 2020, creating a massive political crisis for the Congress government that had pushed it to the brink.

The newly-elected RUSU president Choudhary immediately made it clear where his allegiance lies. “I consider Pilot sahab (Sachin Pilot) my idol. Elder brother Mukesh ji Bhakar, Pilot Sahab, they did sangharsh, they took to streets but despite that they didn’t get their dues for this struggle. I decided that when one has to struggle in life, why do it by being in an organisation, when that organisation doesn’t pay attention to your struggle,” he told reporters.

While the Pilot loyalist MLAs avoided actively campaigning for their candidates in the RUSU polls, soon after Choudhary emerged victorious, Bhakar, who himself rose in the Congress from student politics, posted a congratulatory tweet praising him.

Abhimanyu Poonia also congratulated Choudhary, even as Pilot himself did not issue any statement over the RUSU polls.

The political significance of the RUSU president’s post could be gauged from the fact that many leaders, including cabinet minister Pratap Singh Khachariyawas, RLP chief Hanuman Beniwal and Congress leader Raghu Sharma, went on to launch successful political careers after holding the post.

In the student union polls held in government universities recently across Rajasthan after a gap of two years, the NSUI failed to win the president’s post at any varsity. While the RSS’ students wing ABVP bagged the president’s post in five universities, the CPI(M)’s students wing, the Student Federation of India (SFI), clinched it in two, and the Independents and others in seven, including the prestigious Rajasthan University.