AMUSU Election Results Announced

In the students’ union elections of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) held on Saturday, Salman Imtiaz has been elected as the president, Hamza Sufyan as vice president, and Huzaifa Aamir as the honourary secretary of the AMUSU.

It is being said that after 44 years, someone from Aligarh – a local – has managed to win the post of the president. Imtiaz received 5,731 votes as against the runner up, Mohammad Gajnabi, who received 3,158.  

Afreen Fatima has been elected as the president of Women’s College Students’ Union (WCSU), while Nahid Asad and Memoona Ansari grabbed the posts of vice president and honourary secretary of WCSU respectively. There are total 18,886 voters in the varsity, while 3,014 voters get to select WCSU office-bearers.

Talking to Newsclick about his plans following the appointment, Salman Imtiaz said, "I will firstly build up a legal team of lawyers who studied from AMU, and are practicing at different places, who will guide us when some media houses try to defame the university. We will interact with only the liberal and secular media houses, who report our statements verbatim, without twisting them.”

Mohammad Sajjad, a professor of History at the AMU, said, "AMUSU elections are never too political, as the students are not trained to be political. I am not asking students to be affiliated with any political party, but students’ politics should be rooted in independent thinking. May student leaders used to be good orators of English and Urdu, but this year, the standard has deteriorated in terms of content and pronunciation.” 

He added, "Student leaders do not articulate the issue properly or through the pamphlets. We have never seen culture of pamphlet-writing, neither have seen quality slogans being coined in the campus. I think as teachers, we have failed to train them properly. We need to train them in the classroom as well as outside the classroom."

WCSU President Fatima, who is a student of B.A Linguistics, told Newsclick, "The basic reason behind my contesting election is that there are many biases when it comes to women. People have this mindset that the girls are weak, and we are discriminated against. Library here is open until 6 pm. We want it to be open till 8 pm. Women empowerment is a key agenda for me.”

Maryam Batool, Ferdaus Ahmed Barbhuiya, Syed Shahrukh Hussain, Gawtham K, Nishant Bhardwaj, Naved Alam, Fahd Ayub Zinjani, Moin Uddin, Fakhara Khan and Hasan Mustafa have been elected as the AMUSU Cabinet members. The newly elected WCSU members are Afreen Khan, Aleena Rab, Afreen, Alveena Rehman, Naba Rahman, Hala Masroor, Sana Habib and Saima Shaukat.