The University of Hyderabad’s student union election has ended with a result that, on the surface, looks like a reversal of last year. The left-leaning AISA-ASA-DSU-SFI-TSF alliance has won all four executive positions for 2026-27, along with the cultural secretary post. The right-wing ABVP-SLVD (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad – Sevalal Vidyarthi Dal) panel retained only the sports secretary post. The elections took place on September 28 and the results were declared the next day.
But the result is not simply a Left-Ambedkarite victory over the ABVP. It is also the reversal of the political conditions that produced ABVP’s sweeping victory in 2025. Last year, ABVP-SLVD won all six major posts, returning to power after seven years. A major factor was the split between the Students’ Federation of India (SFI) and the Ambedkar Students’ Association (ASA), two organisations that had together helped keep ABVP out of power since 2019. The two had disagreed over the inclusion of Muslim student organisations, while the Congress-affiliated NSUI also faced student dissatisfaction over the university’s land issue, according to reporting at the time.
This year, SFI and ASA were back together. The All India Students’ Association (AISA), Dalit Students’ Union (DSU) and Tribal Students Front (TSF) joined them. The result suggests that organisational arithmetic still matters enormously at HCU, even when student politics is often discussed through broader national ideological narratives.
78.1% turnout, and a near-complete alliance victory
A total of 5,941 students were eligible to vote this year, of whom 4,641 cast their ballot, putting turnout at 78.1%. SFI’s Dilshada Raihan defeated ABVP-SLVD’s Naresh P for president, securing 2,178 votes against 1,727.
For vice-president, TSF candidate Korra Nithin Chauhan defeated ABVP-SLVD’s Barsharani Behera by more than 200 votes. ASA’s Pratik Sagar won the general secretary post against ABVP’s Venisa Choudhary, while AISA’s Siddhant Shaswat defeated ABVP-SLVD’s Sapthagiri for joint secretary by more than 300 votes.
The cultural secretary contest was the closest. ASA’s Abhinash Kumar eventually won against ABVP’s Madhur Dhingra by five votes. The announcement of that result became contentious during counting. ABVP demanded a recount, and supporters of the two sides clashed. The Election Commission withheld the announcement before the university administration subsequently declared the result.
The delay triggered a protest by members of the Left-Ambedkarite alliance at the university’s administrative building on September 30. Students affiliated with AISA, ASA, DSU, SFI and TSF blocked the Vice-Chancellor’s office, demanding that the result be announced.
In a statement titled ‘Stand With Democracy. Stand With Your Vote’, the alliance alleged that the delay was being used to benefit the ABVP and accused the university administration of interfering in a student election.
The dispute has since ended with Abhinash Kumar being declared the winner. The episode, however, showed that the election remained contested even after voting ended.
The alliance that returned
After the results, the victorious candidates and their supporters marched to Velivada, the site associated with Rohith Vemula’s protest and where a statue in his memory was unveiled.
For the newly elected leaders, the result is being understood primarily through the return of the organisations that had been divided last year. SFI HCU secretary Asika VM said that the election showed that the earlier division had been overcome.
For Dilshada, the newly elected president, the result carried a significance beyond the immediate election. “HCU has once again shown that we can defeat fascism,” she said.
“Last year I cried in front of the Ambedkar auditorium thinking how minorities and the marginalised will survive after ABVP won the election.” ABVP had won all the major posts the previous year.
Korra Nithin Chauhan, the newly elected vice-president, framed the result as a rejection of the outgoing union.
“ABVP never accepts their failure. They have not done anything in their one year tenure, except promoting the works done during our tenure as theirs,” he said.
For Pratik Sagar, the new general secretary, the victory was inseparable from the longer history of caste politics at HCU. He dedicated the victory to Rohith Vemula, BR Ambedkar, Payal Tadvi and all those who fought against casteism and Brahminism.
“HCU stands against casteism and for secular values. This is a victory of all the people who fight against casteism and communalism,” he said. “We have won with the slogan: educate, agitate, organise.”
That language is significant because it places the 2026 election within the political memory that has shaped HCU student politics for years.
A reversal of a pattern that began before 2025
The history of HCU elections helps explain why the coming together of SFI and ASA mattered. In 2019, an alliance of SFI, ASA, DSU and TSF swept the election, with SFI’s Abhishek Nandan winning the presidency with 2,205 votes. The alliance won all the posts on offer. In the 2022-23 election too, the Left-Ambedkarite alliance dominated, when ASA’s Prajwal Gaikwad became president and the ASA-SFI-DSU alliance won all nine central-panel posts.
In 2024, the SFI-ASA-DSU-Bahujan Students’ Front (BSF-HCU) alliance again swept the major posts.
Then came 2025. ABVP-SLVD won all six major posts, with Shiva Palepu becoming president. ABVP’s victory came after SFI and ASA had parted ways. TNM reported at the time that the two organisations had together prevented ABVP from winning since 2019, and that their split had changed the electoral landscape.
This year’s election therefore restored something that had been missing from last year’s contest: a common electoral platform for the two largest organisations in the Left-Ambedkarite camp. AISA, DSU and TSF were also part of the panel, giving the alliance an organisational reach that ABVP now had to confront across different student constituencies.
ABVP says it was not defeated simply on performance
The outgoing ABVP-SLVD president Shiva Palepu disputed the idea that the election was a straightforward rejection of his union’s work.
“We carried out a lot of infrastructural activities during our tenure and built a good image among students. Five organisations have joined hands to defeat us,” he said.
His argument was that the alliance’s numerical advantage should not automatically be read as evidence that ABVP had lost support among students. He said organisations in the third alliance had cross-voted in some executive contests, helping SFI-backed candidates win.
“Third alliance organisations, including Muslim Students’ Federation (MSF) and Fraternity, cross-voted for two executive positions so that SFI won, but morally we won because we are the largest organisation on the campus,” he said. He also said that ABVP’s vote share had increased, quoting figures released by the administration.
His explanation for the result was therefore different from that of the victorious alliance. For Shiva, the election demonstrated the ability of several organisations to consolidate specifically against ABVP rather than a wholesale rejection of ABVP’s work.
Shiva also defended the demand for a recount in the cultural secretary contest. “We demanded a recount, which the university has not done. According to the Lyngdoh Committee, recounting can be done if the margin is less than 1% of votes cast. Instead of ordering a recount, the Vice-Chancellor and the Dean of Students Welfare took a call and simply announced the winner,” he said.
The campaign problems ABVP itself recognises
A senior ABVP leader who has held key organisational positions on campus, who spoke on condition of anonymity, offered a more critical assessment of his own side’s campaign. He said the GB Hall controversy had hurt the ABVP and provided momentum for the left. The dispute involved a theatre performance by the students of the Sarojini Naidu School of Arts and Communication at GB Hall that ABVP members had objected to, saying it hurt religious sentiments.
Reports at the time recorded competing allegations from ABVP and SFI over the confrontation.
The ABVP leader said the controversy had been “pre-planned” to damage the organisation’s image. He claimed that students from the left organisations were already present at the venue before ABVP to support the play and argued that the school had a strong left political presence.
He also said some ABVP cadres were involved in unnecessary fights, which is a drawback for the organisation. He also said newer students and politically neutral students could have viewed the incidents differently from ABVP supporters.
His assessment of the election was particularly revealing on one point: the ABVP had difficulty turning its union work into a strong electoral narrative. “We performed well during our student union tenure but somehow we couldn’t promote it on social media as well as the left,” he said.
He said that SFI was stronger at creating narratives online and that ABVP’s smaller campus issues were often overshadowed when left organisations turned individual incidents into larger political stories.
He also rejected the idea that the wider Gen Z protest movement had influenced the election. “There was zero impact of the Gen Z protests in this election,” he said. “Gen Z voted for ABVP in DU, nobody even raised that issue during our campaigns.”
The cultural secretary contest captured the larger fight
The closest contest of the election was also the one that produced the most visible confrontation. Abhinash Kumar of ASA won the cultural secretary position by five votes. For Abhinash, who hails from a Dailt community, the result had a personal meaning that extended beyond the campus.
“I’m from a remote Bihar village, a first-generation learner. I struggled till reaching this campus. I’m the first one from my district to do a master’s in classical music,” adding, “Brahmanvad log, Manuvadis cannot accept a Dalit victory.”
“My fight started at my village, it has reached HCU and it will not end here. I will continue the fight till my last breath,” he said.
His account reflects how some candidates understand HCU elections not merely as contests over union posts, but as extensions of longer struggles over caste and social representation. That political language has a long history at the university. In 2019, the victorious alliance explicitly linked its mandate to the struggle around Rohith Vemula and opposition to exclusionary policies in higher education. The same political memory was visible after this year’s result, when the victorious panel marched to Velivada.
Not a permanent realignment
There is also a reason not to read this election as the end of ABVP at HCU. The organisation still won the sports secretary post. The outgoing president, Shiva Palepu, said that ABVP’s tenure had delivered infrastructure-related work, pointing out the increase in their vote share. He also said the organisation will return in the next election.
Shiva argued that the organisation’s politics remained relevant to students and invoked ABVP victories among younger voters in other university elections. But this year’s result shows that the 2025 victory did not translate into a permanent electoral realignment.
HCU’s electoral history has repeatedly moved between alliances. ABVP swept the university in 2018. The Left-Ambedkarite alliance won in 2019. That alliance returned to power again in the post-pandemic election. ABVP swept again in 2025. Now, a broader Left-Ambedkarite-tribal alliance has returned to the union.
The pattern is not simply one ideology replacing another. It is a campus where alliances, organisational splits, candidate choices, student memories and the performance of the incumbent union can quickly change the electoral equation.
That is perhaps the most important lesson of the 2026 result. Last year, the division between SFI and ASA helped create conditions for an ABVP sweep. This year, their reunion helped produce almost the opposite result. The election therefore tells us less about a permanent ideological ownership of the campus than about the importance of political organisation itself.
For now, the union has changed hands. The more consequential question for the next election may be whether the alliance that brought the left and Ambedkarite organisations back together can remain together once the election is over.
Kanchi Dileep is an independent researcher, and an alumnus of the University of Hyderabad and Pondicherry University.
Views expressed are the author’s own.
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