New Delhi: The campaign for the Delhi University Students Union is heating up with skirmishes being reported in several colleges between candidates and student activists.

Last year, the Congress's National Students Union of India (NSUI) had regained the DUSU president's post after a gap of four years, following a campaign against violence on the campus after the Sangh-backed Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) disrupted a seminar.

This year, the CPIML-Liberation's AISA - the third force on the campus - has tied up with the Aam Aadmi Party's Chhatra Yuva Sangharsh Samiti (CYSS) for the September 12 election.

While the NSUI credits itself with re-establishing peace on the campus, and even publishing a students' magazine - unheard of in the DUSU, which is known for its money and muscle politics - there are fears that the CYSS-AISA alliance may eat into its vote share and give the ABVP a 2015-like sweep of all the four main posts - president, vice-president, secretary and joint secretary.

Ruchi Gupta, All India Congress Committee joint secretary in charge of the NSUI, has changed the student wing's strategy of throwing lavish pre-poll parties into an issue-based campaign and an ideological challenge to the ABVP.

This year, too, the NSUI was the first to release its manifesto, the lead theme being an Institute of Eminence tag for Delhi University.

"We break it down for them - that if Delhi University had been given Rs 1,000 crore (in five years) that comes with the eminence tag, that works out to Rs 75,000 per student - there wouldn't be fee hikes, and it would bring better labs and libraries. But instead of DU, which admits students who score above 95 per cent, Jio University, which doesn't exist (yet), gets this tag," Gupta told The Telegraph.

The AISA had scored over the rest after it led a successful sit-in at Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal's residence until he agreed to extend student bus passes to air-conditioned public buses, too. The NSUI is hence leaving campaigns on campus-specific issues, such as transportation and hostels, to its college units, focusing more on aspirational topics like the eminence tag, and getting senior Congress women leaders to mentor women students.

The ABVP is focusing on local issues. Its general secretary in DUSU, Mahamedhaa Nagar, told this paper: "We're demanding a 24x7 library and we will end the discrepancy in diet rates for sportspersons for whom we want at least Rs 40 to Rs 50 per day (the amount varies now). A major campaign we have planned is one course, one fee. In DU, fees for the same course vary according to college."

Nagar, easily the most visible face of her union, has come up on top of the pile in the competition between the NSUI and the ABVP to claim credit for installing sanitary napkin-vending machines.

Delhi minister Gopal Rai, who declared the CYSS-AISA alliance, announced a public meeting on constructive nationalism versus what he called the ABVP's "destructive nationalism".

For the AISA, whose DU president Kawalpreet Kaur was roughed up in a clash on Friday, goondaism is the main issue. "It isn't just physical violence. Seminars can no longer be conducted freely. Any critic of their ideology is attacked by the ABVP," said AISA state secretary Niraj Kumar.

The SFI's presidential candidate, Akashdeep Tripathy, was also assaulted by NSUI supporters while filing his nomination on Saturday, allegedly because he is a namesake of their probable candidate Akash Choudhary and voters may be confused.

Voting machines have full names of candidates, and not their organisations. The SFI leads an alliance of Left groups in the DUSU polls.

Like the NSUI and the ABVP, women's security is a poll plank for the AISA-CYSS alliance. AISA, which opposes CCTV cameras and police pickets on campuses, included these demands of the CYSS in their joint manifesto released on Saturday. AISA national president Sucheta De told reporters they would be used to curb hooliganism and not for moral policing.

As the capital gets covered in posters with names of aspiring candidates, the basic issues may still be glossed over. Anil Sehrawat, a history student at Motilal Nehru College, was part of a group yelling the name of an aspirant for an NSUI ticket outside its office on Raisina Road.

"Students are willing to join protests for simple things. We spend hundreds on autos, as there isn't a bus from the campus to the Metro. Paying-guest accommodations fleece us in the absence of hostels or rent control. If anyone fights for it, they will win hands down," he said.

A correction: Sept 3, 2018.
In an earlier version of this report, a statement made by AISA state secretary Niraj Kumar had been left unattributed.