The Yuva Sena’s mysterious disappearance

The Yuva Sena’s mysterious disappearance

It’s nearly two months since the Shiv Sena’s students’ wing, Yuva Sena, has mysteriously disappeared from the city. The timing of their absence is the talk of the town, especially in engineering campuses across Mumbai. Some 25,000 engineering students had a rollercoaster exam season with three question paper leaks in May. The situation was so critical that the Mumbai crime branch had to be roped in to investigate the cases. Case cracked, now three re-exams are on the cards, but yet not a single Yuva Sena member, including boss Aditya Thackeray, is traceable. Young technicians are asking, ‘Aren’t we at par with TYBCom students, for whom the Sena was batting till recently.’ Till the first week of April, the Yuva Sena was shouting at the top of their voices against the university administration, against the vice chancellor to be precise, condemning them for the delay in issuing hall tickets, goof-ups in exam centres, and the TY BCom paper leak. Sena members gave detailed interviews on the inept handling of the examinations by the campus head. After the Shiv Sena’s victory in the February BMC elections, its youth wing even managed to grab page 1 lead space in leading newspapers. Elated with the coverage, Thackeray junior repeatedly met the chancellor of universities and Governor K Shankarnarayan, pressing for Vice Chancellor Dr Rajan Welukar’s removal. He left no stone unturned to promote himself as a ‘charismatic and powerful’ youth leader calling last minute press conferences like a seasoned politician to launch verbal attacks on VC. Senators from the Yuva Sena had also joined the chorus. They created a ruckus when they were suspended from the senate for a day for not maintaining decorum and posed as victims of the VC who was once their blue-eyed boy after removing Rohinton Mistry’s book from the BA syllabus. The matter got so bad that at one point, even professors started calling journalists to check if the VC has been ousted. Actually, he was on the verge of ouster until April 11, when Raj Bhavan announced the appointment of three new officers at campus. Immediately, the Yuva Sena disappeared from the scene. The gaffes, though, continued. Neither did it come out when a BMS paper was leaked in the third week of April, nor during the 50-day statewide professors’ strike, which ensured results across Maharashtra were delayed, putting the future of 30 lakh students in doubt. The Yuva Sena’s silence is attributed to Nagpur. If sources are to be believed, the university allegedly sought help from a big politician from Nagpur and also from a leader of an opposition party. The big guns apparently managed to control the Yuva Sena horses through Matoshri. Though it is unclear what Yuva Sena got in return. Probably the university has now become too ‘hot’ to handle as besides the Yuva Sena, other students’ wings like the MNVS, ABVP and NSUI have also adopted a silence policy. So, could this be the end of students’ politics in the university campus?