Barring a SC ordered report; Govt has no report or study of its own on Student body politics

Mumbai: As tempers and tensions continue to be on the boil across campuses of premier educational institutions across the country, the incidents have once again brought student body politics into the limelight. It is rather ironical to find that barring the J M Lyngdoh committee report of the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) as mandated by the Supreme Court, the government has conducted no other study on the subject matter. Worst still, one of the main recommendations of the Lyngdoh committee, to keep students unions affiliated with political parties out of the educational campuses has been ceremoniously dumped for good.

The Lyngdoh committee in its report submitted on May 23, 2006 before the SC had in its recommendations had called for keeping students unions affiliated to political parties out of the campuses of educational institutions. A far cry from whatever is happening at present in campuses at, be it Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Jamia Milia Islamia University (JMIU), Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) and others.

The committee in its report had stated “it was generally felt that organizations such as NSUI, ABVP, AISF, SFI etc., had a tendency, more often than not, to unnecessarily politicize the election process. The involvement of these organizations in student elections leads to the creation of rival factions within the students, which, in turn, leads to the subservience of the ultimate goal of democratic student representation”.

The genesis of the Lyngdoh committee report lay in the Supreme Court hearings in the judgment of the division bench of the Kerala High Court on February 20, 2004, in the Kerala Students Union versus Sojan Francis case. In their judgment the division bench of justice’s K Radhakrishnan and K P Nair had observed,” it was open to the educational institutions to prohibit political activities within the college campus and forbid students from organizing or attending meetings other than the official ones within the college campus.”

The Lyngdoh committee had among other recommendations had prescribed the age-limit for under-graduate and post-graduate body elections, the amount of money they could spend on the elections, minimum attendance, no political affiliations, grievance redressal mechanism, the composition of these student bodies. What is happening now on the campuses is almost exactly the opposite.

In Maharashtra, student body elections were banned after the infamous broad daylight murder of Owen D’Souza at Vile Parle’s Jitendra Chauhan College of Law in 1989. Thereafter, the Maharashtra government banned student body elections till 2014, when the previous Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Shiv Sena led government decided to lift the 25 year old ban.

Despite the good intentions, the government has not been able to keep politics and political parties out of these student body elections. The Maharashtra government has heavily relied on the Lyngdoh committee report which was prepared almost 14 years ago and was based on the Kerala High Court case judgment which itself dealt with a college principal debarring a student union leader from appearing for his exams for want of minimum 75 percent attendance.

Both the judgment and the committee report had not taken the Owen D’Souza murder case of 1989. Besides this there has been no survey or any study conducted by the government on student body politics in India.

According to some sketchy details appearing in the 1971 special edition of Economic & Political Weekly and a similar document on Shodhganga, there is no other authentic account of the student politics, which many admit has had its role to play in India’s freedom struggle.

Unconfirmed past records and reports reveal that in early year 2000, a NSUI candidate is reported to have spent Rs 1 crore to become the president of Delhi University Students Union (DUSU). There have been several instances of student union leaders over-staying on the campus, just by postponing their Graduation so that they could avail of hostel and other facilities, and continue to hold on to their posts, or be eligible for contesting elections to the president’s post.

What is even more bizarre is that some student unions in recent DUSU elections have in their election manifesto’s made references to Gurmeet Ram Rahim, to Rohingya’s, to Triple Talak and One Rank, One Pension (OROP) issue.

As per the 1971 special edition of Economic & Political Weekly, student body elections in India, especially in West Bengal took a violent turn around 1967-68. According to the E&PW, the spike in violent acts categorized as level four crimes which included – police firing peaked in 1966, with 53 cases being reported. From 17 cases registered in 1964, the number shot up to 53 in 1966 alone.

According to the report, “after 1967 ‘Naxalite’ students particularly in Bengal resorted increasingly to political murders of “class enemies”, including teachers, principals and professor’s”.

Critics have always maintained that student body politics has rarely served its real intended purpose of creative political thinking arguing that ideologically brainwashed students refuse to self-analyze later on in life. They argue that none of the real academic issues, actual problems like hostel facilities, girls safety, academic fees and other issues rarely get resolved.

For some college and university campuses have become proxy battle grounds for political parties. It has also lead to inefficiency as the administration gets scared to act in cases of academic misdemeanors. However, those in favor argue that the student body politics has thrown up political leaders like Arun Jaitley, Ajay Maken and Sitaram Yechury.