By Abinand Prijith
Hyderabad: The 18th Students Federation of India All India Conference concluded in Kozhikode, Kerala, with the election of 87 Central Executive Committee (CEC) members, who subsequently elected Adarsh Saji as the all-India president and Srijan Bhattacharya as the all-India general secretary.
Among the elected office bearers, Md Ateeq Ahmed of the University of Hyderabad (UoH), the current Telangana state joint secretary, and T Nagaraju, the current Telangana state secretary, were elected as national joint secretary and national vice president, respectively.
New leadership, continuing struggle
The conference elected Adarsh Saji, currently pursuing an LLB at Janhit College, New Delhi, as the President of the organisation. Adarsh began his activism during his college days in Kerala, serving as the general secretary of the Kerala University Students Union and the all-India joint secretary of SFI from the 17th National Conference in 2022 to 2025.
Adarsh has led student protests in several states, including Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Puducherry. He was a key organiser of the student protest held in front of the Israeli Embassy in Delhi against the attacks on Palestine. He also led several agitations against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). Srijan Bhattacharya has been elected as the general secretary of the organisation.
Srijan began his activism in 2007 during his 7th grade. He served as the Bengal state secretary of the organisation and was elected as the national joint secretary for the term of 2022 to 2025.
He has been at the forefront of protests against the policies of the Mamata Banerjee government, such as the decision to open bars and pubs while schools remained closed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
He contested as part of the Left Front in the 2021 Assembly election and the 2024 general election from the Singur Assembly constituency and Jadavpur Assembly constituency, respectively.
Telangana students among the office bearers
Md Ateeq Ahmed, a research scholar from the University of Hyderabad (UoH), has been elected as the national joint secretary. He is the current Telangana state joint secretary and served as the president of the UoH Students Union (UoHSU) for the 2023-24 term.
Ateeq began his activism during his graduation days in 2017. He was at the forefront of the HCU land movement earlier this year. Speaking to Siasat.com, he said, “This is a big responsibility that the organisation has given me, and I will ensure that I fulfil this responsibility with full determination.”
T Nagaraju, an LLM student at Kakatiya University, Warangal, has been re-elected as the national vice president. Nagaraju previously served as the Telangana state president and is currently the Telangana state secretary of the organisation.
He began his activism in 2006, when he was in the 9th grade, against the imposition of fees in his government-run school. He became the Enkoor mandal secretary in 2013, Khammam district president in 2014, Telangana state president in 2018, and was elected as the National Vice President in 2019.
Fight against saffronisation, declining quality of education to continue
The newly elected SFI leadership plans to continue the unequivocal fight against saffronisation and the deteriorating quality of education in the country. “Almost 67,000 schools have closed in India over the past three years, most in the so-called double-engine government states of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh. This failure of the government is destroying the future of the youth,” said Adarsh Saji.
He also stressed the need to continue the fight against the New Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020) and the saffronisation of textbooks, where subjects are being rewritten along the lines of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
Resolution against HCU land grab at the conference
A resolution against the HCU land grab was passed unanimously at the conference by 517 delegates from different states. Speaking to Siasat.com, Adarsh Saji, the newly elected president of the Students Federation of India (SFI), said, “The land meant for education should only be used for educational purposes; it shouldn’t be utilised for corporate gains.”
The HCU land grab attempt occurred earlier this year when the state government tried to auction off 400 acres of land and cleared around 100 acres of forest cover. This move faced widespread resistance from the university’s students, led by the Students Union, in which the Students Federation of India (SFI) is a stakeholder.
