The Madhya Pradesh High Court, responding to a PIL filed by student leaders including from the NSUI, has directed the state government to conduct elections in the state’s university and college student unions. It is a welcome and long-delayed step. Student union elections in Madhya Pradesh have been conducted irregularly since 2006, when professor H S Sabharwal was murdered allegedly by ABVP activists (the six people booked were later acquitted) opposed to his conduct of elections in Ujjain’s Madhav College.

Unfortunately, Madhya Pradesh is not an exception. It represents the national norm of governmental indifference or even repression of student politics — a trend that has accelerated significantly in the last decade. The Allahabad University Students Union, which has in the past been led by stalwarts like Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna, Narayan Dutt Tiwari, Dr Shankar Dayal Sharma, and V P Singh, was abolished by the University’s academic council in 2019. Aligarh Muslim University Student Union — of which Mahatma Gandhi himself was a life member — has been inactive since 2019. At the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, the administration has dissolved the student union and moved to an unelected students’ council. Aside from Kerala and a handful of select........

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