After last year’s fiasco, ABVP to field only DU grads

By Rohan Agarwal

New Delhi, Aug 26 (IANS) After last year's big embarrassment when it had to suspend it's presidential candidate due to submission of forged documents, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) has decided to be extra careful this time. It has shortlisted only University of Delhi (DU) graduates as its candidates for the Delhi University Students Union (DUSU) elections, 2019.

The RSS' students' wing will also keep the original documents of the candidates for scrutiny to make sure they are authentic.

Last year, the ABVP was left embarrassed when its presidential candidate for the DUSU polls was found to have filed forged documents to get admission in Delhi University.

It's candidate Ankiv Baisoya had even won the presidential post with a margin of 1,744 votes, but later his admission was cancelled by the university's Department of Buddhist Studies on November 14, a day before he stepped down from his post and the ABVP suspended him pending an inquiry.

Making sure that the same is not repeated this year, the ABVP on Thursday announced the names of 10 probable candidates for the DUSU polls to be held next month. This time nine candidates out of the ten are DU graduates while one of them is currently pursuing graduation from DU.

The 10 probable candidates are Tushar Dedha, Yogit Rathi, Sahil Malik, Akshit Dahiya, Sachin Bansal, Varun Rekswal, Pradeep Tanwar, Shivangi Kharaab, Jaideep Maan and Mansi Chauhan. All are graduates of DU, except for Mansi Chauhan who is currently pursuing her Bachelors in Arts (Prog.) from DU's Aditi Mahavidhlaya.

The ABVP has also sought from these candidates their original documents required during admission in DU and a dedicated team is currently verifying them.

"Last year whatever happened was due to lack of proper check on the part of the university. But we have decided to filter the candidates from our end. Selecting DU graduates and keeping their original documents are among these precautionary steps," Sidharth Yadav, State Secretary of the ABVP's Delhi unit, told IANS.

"Among the probable candidates, Yogit Rathi and Akshit Dahiya have graduated from Ramjas College, Sachin Bansal from Ramanujan College, Pradeep Tanwar from PGDAV College, Varun Rexwal from Dayal Singh college, Tushar Dedha from Satyawati College, Shivangi Kharwal from Shyama Prasad Mukherjee College, Sahil Malik from Shaheed Bhagat Singh College, Jaideep Mann from Swami Shraddhanand College," Yadav added.

Soon after Baisoya's election as DUSU president on September 13, 2018, the Congress-affiliated National Students' Union of India (NSUI) had accused him of submitting a fake degree to secure admission in DU. The NSUI had later moved the Delhi High Court seeking cancellation of Baisoya's admission.

The NSUI said the fact that Baisoya submitted fake documents to get admission in DU was confirmed by Thiruvalluvar University in Tamil Nadu which gave its response to DU's request to verify his marksheets.

(Rohan Agarwal can be contacted at Rohan.a@ians.in)