The RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) has swept the University of Hyderabad (UoH) students’ union election after seven years, benefitting from major disagreements within its rival camp over the inclusion of two Muslim outfits and a growing disenchantment with the Congress’s student wing. This is the second major campus that the ABVP has won in as many days, having bagged the Delhi University Students’ Union on September 19.
The ABVP said its sweep on Sunday — it won all six posts of president, vice-president, general secretary, joint secretary, cultural secretary, and sports secretary — was a mandate against “those who thrive on spreading anarchy, violence and anti-national activities”. It added, “Today’s Gen Z students have once again proven that they reject hollow slogans and destructive politics. Instead, they placed their trust in an organisation committed to academic excellence, cultural vibrancy and nation building.”
The Sangh-linked outfit gained from a fallout between the Ambedkar Students’ Association (ASA) and the Students’ Federation of India (SFI), the CPI(M)’s student wing, which earlier united under the banner of “progressive students”. The National Students’ Union of India (NSUI), which is affiliated to the Congress, did not find favour with a section of students because of a controversy over university land in Kancha Gachibowli.
Earlier this year, the Congress government decided to auction 400 acres of land through the Telangana Industrial Infrastructure Corporation for development, but ran into opposition from environmentalists, civil society activists, and students. The ABVP managed to capitalise on these protests.
An SFI student leader, who did not wish to be named, told The Indian Express that the alliance with the ASA did not work out this time because the Ambedkarite outfit insisted on including the Muslim Students Federation, the student wing of the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), and Fraternity, the youth outfit of the Jamaat-e-Islami, in the alliance. “We could not have allied with a fundamentalist organisation by compromising on our ideology. The ASA insisted on their participation in the panel, which we rejected,” said the SFI leader.
The ASA hit back, saying the alliance did not materialise because the SFI was trying to marginalise Muslim students. “We pushed for the inclusion of not just the MSF, but also the All India OBC Students Association (AIOBCSA) and the All India Students’ Association (AISA) in the coalition. However, the SFI was not keen on this. So, we decided against an alliance,” said a leader of the outfit.
SFI’s UoH vice-president G Mohit, however, attributed the ABVP’s win to the “right-wing turn that the country has witnessed since the BJP came to power in 2014”.
“The ABVP was able to mobilise young students, who have just joined the campus, faster than other parties, including the SFI,” he said, adding that the ABVP used religious festivals such as the Ganesh Chaturthi to mobilise its supporters.
NSUI falters
However, the huge margins with which the ABVP candidates won — 400 to 1,000 votes — showed the NSUI’s poor showing was also a factor.
ABVP national secretary Shravan B Raj, a PhD scholar at the university, told The Indian Express, “This victory is the result of the hard work of 300 karyakartas of the ABVP… In Kancha Gachibowli, ABVP activists faced lathis and were arrested and remanded by the Telangana Police … From malfunctioning washrooms to UoH’s NIRF (National Institutional Ranking Framework) ranking (18 among universities in 2025), the ABVP focused on a student-centric campaign that foregrounded nationalism.”
An NSUI leader said on the condition of anonymity, “The ABVP was able to make the students forget that their outfit was in the dock over Rohith Vemula’s suicide 10 years ago.”
Rohith Vemula, a PhD scholar, died by suicide in January 2016, leading to countrywide protests against caste discrimination. In his lifetime, Rohith had identified himself as a Dalit and wrote in his suicide note, “My birth is my fatal accident.” Vemula was an ASA leader and, at the time, a tiff between the Ambedkarite outfit and the ABVP was blamed for driving Vemula to take his own life.
For two years after Vemula’s demise, the ASA-SFI coalition swept the polls on campus. However, in 2018, when this coalition did not materialise, the ABVP won the polls. “The fact that the ABVP won the elections in 2018, just two years after these so-called progressive forces led a smear campaign against our outfit over the suicide of Rohith Vemula, shows that the student community on UoH campus did not buy into their political gimmicks,” said Shravan B Raj.
Union Ministers G Kishan Reddy and Bandi Sanjay Kumar congratulated the ABVP on X on Sunday. “Just after Delhi University, the clean sweep by ABVP in Hyderabad Central University is a clear testament of its devotion to working for student welfare,” said Raj.