Students & Politics

The Lingdoh committee has advised that elections should be held in all universities & colleges of the country to enable students to elect their representatives in their institutions.

‘The issue of student politics has been debated too often, Whether elections to the student councils should be held or not & if yes, then under what circumstances’ is a question which has seen opinions of almost all political parties differ from time to time. Increasing criminalization is no more a preserve of the General politics but has creeped into the amateur student politics as well. The Supreme Court had directed the center to form a committee to study the issue of student politics & submit a report. A committee was formed by the Human Resources Ministry of Arjun Singh, under the leadership of Ex-Election Commissioner J. M. Lingdoh. The subjects placed before it for study were Criminalization of student politics, financial transparency in student elections, limits of expenditure & eligibility for contesting elections. The committee was also to advise on measures to create an environment conducive to academics in educational institutions, foster discipline & suggest ways to save them from divisions on grounds differing political ideologies.


Hardly anybody could have doubted the objectives placed before the Lingdoh committee but this turned out to be an attempt to ban student politics in the guise of curbing its nefarious elements. The recent ban on elections to the student council in JNU have laid bare the macabre intentions of the government, which was to ban the student politics altogether. It is a classic case of the medicine being worse than the disease.

If the Lingdoh committee’s objective was to rid the student politics from the vagaries of criminal – political – moneybag combine & drive out all the undesirable elements giving it a clean image, then seems to be no point in banning elections in JNU. The reason are not far to seek, JNU being an institutions where the student politics has mostly been devoid criminalization & financial muscle. It is one of the possibly very few institutes in the country where elections are genuinely contested on ideology. This clearly shows that the ulterior motive of the government through the Lingdoh committee was not to improve student politics but destroy it altogether.

The situation has become so bad that elections are not being held in all but 8 of the 24 central universities in the country. If this is the state of affairs in the central universities, one shudders to think of the reality in the stat universities & autonomous institutions. Most of the states too have chosen to do away student politics on similar grounds, although all political parties have student wings of their own. Reports indicate that he few universities where elections are presently being held are also planning to do away with them citing the report of the Lingdoh committee & the JNU example amongst umpteen others. All this while the Lingdoh committee has itself suggested that elections must be held in all the universities & colleges of the country to enable students to pave way for democratic representation in their institutions. This recommendation had also been accepted by the Supreme Court.

How did the situation move from bad to worse? In February 2000, a task force established by the World Bank had resolved developing member nations to take steps to curb the activism of student politics. It does not take much intelligence to figure that our government is merely implementing yet another recommendation of the World Bank, despite it being contrary to national social development. Our honorable Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was a member of this task force.