In the 128-years history of the Allahabad University, a female has been elected as the president of the Allahabad University students’ union. Richa Singh was elected as the president on Wednesday. As per newspaper reports, Richa, who did MA Economics, became not only the second woman, but the first since Independence, to be elected as the AU students’ union president. Before her, Kumari S K Nehru held the post in 1927.
The runner-up was Rajneesh Singh, an independent candidate supported by the Pratiyogi Chhatra Sangharsh Samiti, who has taken up the cause of agitation against the Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission. Sarvam Dwivedi, bagged the third position.
The voting took place between 10 am and 2 pm and the counting started around 6.30 pm.
Vikrant Singh (vice-president), Siddharth Singh (general secretary), Sarvan Jaiswal (deputy secretary) and Jitendra Shukla (cultural secretary) were other elected office-bearers.
Richa Singh, a research scholar, hails from Aligarh and founded a ‘Friends’ Club’ a few years which was independent of students’ wings of established political parties.
Only 7,352 (about 36 per cent) students came forward to cast their votes out of 20,555 students ,while only 1,286 out of 6,509 (19.76 per cent) woman exercised their franchise.
The pro-left AISA and SFI and the NSUI failed to make an impact this time, while it was the best ever performance put up by the right-wing students’ wing.
The presidential polling took place amid tight security as a volatile situation had emerged in the aftermath of nominations of more than a dozen candidates.
[“source-indiatoday.intoday”]
