New Delhi: For years, Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) politics has largely been a contest between two parties. The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and Congress-backed National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) have dominated the electoral space.
In 2025, ABVP bagged three of the four posts, with NSUI winning the vice president’s seat; in 2024, the two outfits split the panel 2-2, while ABVP won three posts in 2023.
DU activist Ananya said the outfit added 6,000 new members in the first three weeks after DU reopened, driven by the “enthusiasm generated by the Jantar Mantar movement”. We are seeing that students are more concerned with their issues and their agenda,” she said. Its vice president Kamal Tiwari said: “When one of the biggest Gen-Z student movements was taking place, ABVP was nowhere to be seen.
The trend is reflected in the central panel. For AISA, the protest has also translated into an organisational boost. “This time students are posing a serious challenge to the same feudal-patriarchal money based politics that dominates DUSU. ASAP, the AAP’s relaunched student wing, is also banking on the protest’s politics. Students remember who stood with them when it mattered and who chose to stay away.”
SFI Delhi secretary Sooraj Elamon said the organisation would similarly take the CJP-era concerns around examination reform, affordability and accountability into the election, arguing that the movement demonstrated that such issues could mobilise students beyond traditional political constituencies. Member of its Delhi state committee, Bhim Kumar said the issues raised in DUSU politics represent only a “small fragment” of the university, pointing to the exclusion of more than two lakh School of Open Learning (SOL) students from voting rights. KYS, which participated in the CJP protest but does not contest DUSU elections, offers a different reading of the electoral moment.
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