Alliance with benefits, CYSS ties up with 3 parties

Akashdeep Virk

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, August 30

With the final list of nominations for the elections to the Panjab University Campus Student Council’s four posts having been released, the parties have begun wooing each other for alliance. The Chhatra Yuva Sangharsh Samiti (CYSS), Aam Aadmi Party’s student wing, has joined hands with the Haryana’s Jannayak Janata Party (JJP)-backed INSO; HPSU, a party with strong presence among students hailing from Himachal; and the USO. This is CYSS’s second decision to cement their chances to win after they took the first step in this direction by appeasing the rebel leaders by giving them various party posts at the Student Centre on Thursday.

The team formation seems to be a conveniently pre-planned collaboration, as the CYSS has only fielded its candidate, first-year LLM student Prince Chaudhary, for the presidential post, the INSO picked fourth-year UILS student Vineet Yadav for the secretary’s post, HPSU made UIHTM student Rohit Sharma its candidate for the post of joint secretary and USO has fielded Karanveer Kamboj, a Sociology Department student, for the post of vice-president.

“We aim to benefit from the majority of students with this alliance. A lot of students are from Himachal and HPSU represents them here. INSO is popular among students from Haryana and they had also won the post of general secretary last year. They have a huge vote bank in the campus. The USO has been working well on the ground and joining hands with them will also go in our favour,” said a senior CYSS leader.

Old war horse to dent Cong votes

The old war horse, SOPU has finalised its alliance with the rebel group, who quit the NSUI. The Himachal Student Union (HIMSU) has extended unconditional suport to the rebel group. The SOPU has fielded Jashanpreet Jawandha as secretary while the rebels have fielded Anurag Dalal for presidential seat. The rebel group is being led by Sikander Boora, who quit the NSUI on Wednesday alleging that the decision on candidates’ names was a “Tughlaqi farmaan” from Delhi. Anurag Dalal is a research scholar who had been associated with the NSUI for eight years.

Dalvir Singh Goldy Khangura, former MLA and PUCSC president, who quit the Congress to join AAP before the Punjab Vidhan Sabha elections, is the force behind SOPU’s alliance with rebels. The move is aimed at denting the ones running the show from backstage in the NSUI, the president candidate of which was decided after intervention of a senior Punjab Congress leader. Goldy was on the campus twice lately and held meetings with SOPU party leaders. SOPU, to which Goldy gives credit of preparing him for politics, used to have a strong presence on the campus but declined after 2012 when young gun Vicky Middukhera moved to the SOI from SOPU.