The Communists and radical leftists seem to be facing a major existential crisis even in the few strangleholds- mostly Universities, where it still enjoys some presence.
In a huge setback to the Communist student bodies, the ABVP has made massive inroads in the Red Citadel- Jadavpur University. The RSS-affiliated organisation came second, leaving behind its rival, the Students’ Federation of India (SFI) in the engineering faculty.
The ABVP was contesting in the University for the first time, and therefore it seems to have put up a rather impressive performance, given that the University has emerged as a leftist bastion in the recent past.
Jadavpur University (JU) has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. Leftist hooliganism is a big issue with the University and as such the influential leftist bodies have made all possible attempts to keep other political bodies, particularly the ABVP at bay.
In the month of September last year, Union Minister and BJP leader, Babul Supriyo, was heckled, manhandled, his shirt torn by the goons of Student Federation of India (student body of CPM) in Jadavpur University, where he went to attend an event organized by Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad.
Supriyo had revealed how the leftist goons had attacked him in a ruthless manner. He had said, “They assaulted me the moment I got out of the car. They kicked me, punched me, caught my hair … pulled me from one end to another. These were apparently students.” The Union Minister added, “They hit me again with wooden sticks on my hand after I came down from the programme.”
The leftist bodies which virtually rule over JU as if it were their fiefdom had also blocked West Bengal Governor Dhankar from entering the University.
Such hooliganism and intolerance of the leftist cabal at the university had also come to the fore during the anti-CAA protests when a student who is found to be supporting either the CAA or the BJP was bullied as and boycotted while attending classes.
Rajya Sabha MP, Dasgupta had then revealed, “Yesterday, I met a BJP student of Jadavpur University. He said that his fellow students would not allow him to attend class because they could not be in the same class as a ‘fascist’. His professors told him that in endorsing BJP, he was being wilfully ‘provocative’. This is the grim reality of some institutions in Bengal who lecture us on democracy.”
The leftist hooligans thus always treated JU as their fiefdom, but that is going to change even as the ABVP seems to be making its presence felt by making substantial inroads into the left dominated Jadavpur University.