New Delhi: Aishe Ghosh, the president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union (JNUSU), has been fielded by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] to contest the assembly elections in West Bengal.
She is the Left-Congress alliance’s candidate from the Jamuria seat and be supported by the Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), which is spearheading the farmers’ protest against the three Central farm laws.
According to NDTV, she is the first sitting president of JNUSU to contest an assembly election.
Ghosh was one of the targets of the brutal January 5, 2020 attack on students and faculty members at the JNU campus. ‘Masked goons’ had entered the campus and injured several persons, with the image of Ghosh’s bleeding forehead becoming one of the iconic moments of the brutal attack.
JNUSU members Aishe Ghosh with other members. Photo: PTI
Though Ghosh told The Wire that she can identify her attackers, she herself was named as a suspect in the violence by the Delhi police. The police claimed that she had led the mob that attacked students at a hostel. Those who were targets of the violence had blamed the RSS and its student wing ABVP for perpetrating the attack.
Elections to the 294-member West Bengal assembly will be held in eight phases, with the first phase beginning on March 27. The final round of voting will take place on April 29 and the votes will be counted on May 2.
Apart from the Left parties and the Congress, the Indian Secular Front is also part of the alliance.
Listen: Podcast | Women in India Are the Face of Resistance: Aishe Ghosh
Last year, just days after the JNU attack, CPI leader and former JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar had thrown his weight behind Ghosh, saying Left parties should make her the face of the fight in Bengal.
The Left parties need to practise what they preach in university agitations and bring in fresh faces in the leadership, he said. “Stagnation is evident when people of a particular age are seen, and those of another generation are not,” he said, according to news agency PTI.
“A girl from Bengal has done very good work in JNU; make her the face of the fight in Bengal,” Kumar said. Kumar himself had contested the 2019 Lok Sabha election from Bihar’s Begusarai, but lost by a significant margin.