AU Students Union a missing factor in LS polls

Prayagraj: Student politics, which once formed a key element of any election in and around Prayagraj, is no longer an attraction. The reason many feel is the Allahabad University discontinuing its Students Union in 2018, citing a slew of violent events ahead of the varsity polls even though the demand for its revival comes across groups.

The Allahabad University Students Union (AUSU) was established in 1923 and it was actively involved in the Quit India Movement (1942) against the British rule so much so that the Empire even had the AUSU dissolved but it was revived again in 1945-46, Shyam Krishna Pandey noted in his book ‘Youth’s Initiative: Struggle and India’s Freedom’.

Social activist and Allahabad High Court lawyer K K Roy, who led the Allahabad University Students’ Union as the president from 1988 to 1991, said the AUSU worked like a primary school for future parliamentarians and to establish a permanent voice assessing the government of the day. “Several youth organisations not only here but in other parts of North India established a culture of progressive youth politics.

Student politics is like the primary school of democracy which produced politicians, thinkers, civil servants, journalists and luminaries in many other walks of life,” Roy told PTI. “But ever since 2014, all such institutions which voiced any opposition and criticism, were ended in the country like trade unions and four significant changes were brought in the labour laws also. The existence of the students’ union in Uttar Pradesh has been eliminated,” the former student leader alleged.

Roy recalled that students during that era felt familial relations with former prime ministers, particularly VP Singh and Chandra Shekhar, who even visited the varsity to meet them. “The brunt of not having the students union is being borne by the youth.

Today, unemployment is a major issue. Had the students union been there, then from 2017 to 2023, there would not have been paper leaks. The boys would have knocked on the doors of Lucknow’s Vidhan Sabha and Delhi’s Parliament,” he added. Veteran Congress leader Abhay ‘Baba’ Awasthi, who was the union’s vice president from 1988-91, said inflation, unemployment and corruption are today issues of discussion and not issues of voting, adding that these issues do not have any reflection on election and that is because of lack of any student politics.