Thiruvananthapuram: Amid the LDF wave that has swept across Kerala lies the story of two victorious candidates who had a unique reason to have made their mark in the Assembly elections. Both these candidates are students at Delhi’s much-discussed Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).
As the university got mired in controversy, two students – one from the Left and another from the Congress – viz., Mohammed Mohsin and Roji M John, turned it to their advantage. While Mohsin is the LDF candidate from Pattambi in Palakkad, John fought on a Congress ticket from Angamaly.
Both students stood on a common platform during the controversy that followed the arrest of Kanhaiya Kumar. Back home in Kerala, they fought from opposite planks. Mohsin is the vice-president of the CPI student wing AISF, while John heads the Congress student wing NSUI.
Both students believe their proximity to the events that transpired at JNU lent credence to their campaign. ““The JNU events caught the attention of the entire country, so obviously my candidature has caught the attention of the national media. It helps me in my campaign too,” Mohsin, 30, who’s election pitch also saw Kanhaiya Kumar fly down to God’s own country to campaign for his comrade, told The Indian Express in an earlier interview.
Mohsin was also among those who led the protests for Kanhaiya’s release from prison on charges of sedition. He is a student at the varsity’s School of Social Science.
At last count, he was ahead of his Congress rival by a margin of 7,300 votes. John feels that the interventions of the Congress in the aftermath of Rohith Vemula’s suicide and during the JNU row have helped him establish connect within his constituency.
John, the Congress candidate from Angamaly, has already been declared victorious with 66,666 votes. He beat Benny Moonjely of the JD(S) by a margin of a little less than ten thousand votes.
“Unlike in many other parts of the country, people in Kerala have reacted to the JNU events very positively. The media in Kerala was reporting the developments accurately and the public in general was with the JNU students,” he was quoted as saying.
An alumnus of JNU, John, who hails from Kerala, was the first in his family to join politics. He became the first "elected" national president of NSUI, after Rahul Gandhi introduced the system of election of office bearers in the Congress' student wing and Youth Congress.
