The visit of Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi to Himachal Pradesh next week is targeted at students and youths across the party lines. The NSUI terms this an opportunity to attract students affiliated to other student organisations for ‘student interaction sessions’ with Gandhi at Shimla and Dharamshala on October 13.

Gandhi will interact with students at the HP University auditorium on October 13 in the morning and later in the afternoon at Dharamshala Municipal Council Hall. Instead of the routine speech, the sessions are planned to be an interaction between the young leader and students.

“His tour aims to strengthen the NSUI base in the state and spread Congress ideology among youths,” said Ragini Nayak, national general secretary of NSUI.

With the existing cadre strength of 30,000 students in Himachal, the student wing has launched a round-the-year membership drive in the state and is inviting students from other organisations. To build base in private education institutions, a move never attempted by any student body, the NSUI will attract students of polytechnique institutions and private universities, said Nayak.

“Absence of student organisations in private institutions gives opportunity to their administration to charge exorbitant fees. We are trying to develop a healthy atmosphere of questioning this monopolistic attitude of private players,” she said.

In student elections across colleges of HP University, the NSUI has generally ranked second during the past decade but struggled to retain its college voters as they graduate to the HP University campus. The university has long been a strong bastion of the leftist Student Federation of India (SFI) and the NSUI has not been able to capture even a single seat here in over a decade, though ABVP has won a few seats.

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