The Bharatiya Janata Party's student wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad swept Delhi University students' union polls, retaining all four top posts for the second consecutive year defeating Congress-backed National Students' Union of India while Aam Aadmi Party's Chhatra Yuva Sangharsh Samiti finished third in the vote count in its debut.
The ABVP bagged the posts of president, vice-president, secretary and joint secretary defeating NSUI candidates with a margin of over 4,500 votes each in the fiercely fought contest.
Candidates from the CYSS, the students wing of the ruling AAP in the capital, which made its debut at the campus polls this year, could not open its account and were at the third position as per the overall vote count. The ABVP had bagged all four top posts of DUSU last year also.
ABVP's Satender Awana and Sunny Dedha were elected president and vice president of DUSU respectively. Anjali Rana won the post of secretary and Chhattarpal Yadav was elected joint secretary. Awana polled 20,439 votes defeating Pradeep Vijayran of the NSUI, who polled 14,112 votes. Dedha, a law student, defeated CYSS candidate Garima Rana by a margin of 7,570 votes.
While Rana defeated NSUI's Amit Sehrawat to win the post of secretary, Yadav bagged the joint secretary's position defeating NSUI's Deepak Choudhary.
The CYSS candidates were at the third position for the post of president, secretary and joint secretary while its nominee was in the second for the vice president's post.
Union minister and senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley, who was DUSU president in 1974, congratulated ABVP on its victory in the prestigious polls.
"Congratulations to ABVP & students of Delhi University on winning the DUSU elections & making a clean sweep by winning all the four seats," he tweeted.
BJP President Amit Shah also congratulated the ABVP candidates. "Heartiest Congratulations to all parishad karyakartas on clean sweep in DUSU polls. A victory of ideology #ABVPRocks," he tweeted.
The election held on Saturday saw a turnout of over 43 per cent. A total of 1,35,298 students were eligible to exercise their franchise.
The issues that topped the high-voltage campaign included choice based credit system, Room Rent Control Act, accommodation for all, opening of new colleges and infrastructure development.
