The Congress-backed National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) turned in an impressive performance in the Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) elections by winning the posts of president and joint secretary.

This is the first time since 2017 that the NSUI has won two out of the four main posts.

The DUSU is the country’s largest directly elected students’ union with 1.45 lakh eligible voters who hail from across the country.

After the setback in the Maharashtra elections, the win comes as a shot in the arm for the Congress before the Assembly polls in Delhinext year.

NSUI’s Ronak Khatri was elected president and Lokesh Choudhary joint secretary.

The RSS-backed Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad’s (ABVP) candidates, Bhanu Pratap Singh and Mitravinda Karanwal, were elected vice-president and secretary, respectively. CPM-backed SFI’s Sneha Aggarwal came third with 8,806 votes for the post of secretary while the margin of the ABVP’s victory over the NSUI was less than 1,500 votes. The SFI fought in alliance with CPIML-Liberation’s AISA.

The win comes as a morale boost for the Congress in charge of the NSUI, Kanhaiya Kumar, who faced a crushing defeat in the Lok Sabha polls from North East Delhi.

Asked if the performance of the Left would lead to renewed attempts for an alliance, Kanhaiya told The Telegraph: “We are against the RSS and the ABVP. There are always possibilities for cooperating with like-minded groups, but any decision is taken on the basis of what our college and university units want. The party does not impose anydecision on them.”

Khatri is known as “matkaman” for carrying earthen pots to the campus to demand better water supply. He is a law student and was identified by the Delhi Congress as a diligent activist fromNorth Delhi.

NSUI president Varun Choudhary said the new union’s firstpriority would be to convince the university administration to grant menstrual leave to students and make DU “violence-free” by effectively highlighting “goondaism bythe ABVP”.