The Left-Ambedkarite alliance of AISA, ASA, DSU, SFI and TSF has swept the central panel elections of the University of Hyderabad Students’ Union for 2026-27. Comrade Dilshada of SFI was elected President, Pratik of the Ambedkar Students Association (ASA) as General Secretary, Nithin of the Tribal Students Front (TSF) as Vice-President, Abhinash Kumar of ASA as Cultural Secretary, and AISA’s Comrade Sidhant as Joint Secretary. AISA also won two councillor seats, with Comrade Sateesh winning from the School of Social Sciences and Comrade Sanat from the School of Economics. SFI and ASA also won two of the three posts in ICC-GS-CASH.
The victory comes after last year’s election, when the communal right wing ABVP had won the Students’ Union after a long gap. The unity of Left and Ambedkarite forces had not been consolidated at that time. This year, the expanded alliance, with the inclusion of AISA, brought together a broader student movement and received an overwhelming mandate from the student community against the ABVP and its allies.
The ABVP-SLVD panel won the post of Sports Secretary and one post in ICC-GS-CASH, while ABVP was largely limited to a few seats at the school level. Banoth Sai, who won the Sports Secretary post, belongs to the Seva Lal Vidyarthi Dal (SLVD), which contested in alliance with ABVP. In effect, the ABVP-SLVD panel was wiped out from the executive posts of the Students’ Union except for Sports Secretary.
The election also saw a sharp contest over the Cultural Secretary post. When Abhinash Kumar won by a margin of five votes against the ABVP candidate, ABVP demanded a recount. The Election Commission then handed over the decision to the Vice-Chancellor and the Dean of Students’ Welfare. Students resisted this unprecedented move to hand over the decision on a student union election to the university administration and gheraoed the Vice-Chancellor. Following the student protest, the Election Commission rejected the demand for a recount and declared Abhinash Kumar elected as Cultural Secretary.
The victory at the University of Hyderabad reflects the growing unity of Left and Ambedkarite student forces and the rejection of ABVP’s pro-administration and anti-student politics. It also comes in the context of a nationwide student movement against the failures and policies of the BJP government, the same movement that forced the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and is now demanding the resignation of CEC Gyanesh Kumar.
The University of Hyderabad remains an important centre of this student resistance, and the election verdict has given a clear expression to the political mood on the campus. CPI(ML) General Secretary Comrade Dipankar congratulated the AISA, SFI and other alliance candidates on their victory and welcomed the united mandate of the students against ABVP and its allies.
