Ideology & Its Discontents? Inside the United Students Front’s 2025-26 AUSG Term

Nearly one year ago, in May 2025, the United Students Front (USF) won their first Ashoka University Student Government (AUSG) elections by a comfortable margin, reflecting a broad recognition of their active presence in student politics among the larger student body. As elected representatives, they had two important goals on their agenda: active voice and participation of the student body in shaping their campus lives, and politics – both student and worker oriented – grounded in clear political ideology. 

To understand how the party functioned during its AUSG term, The Edict reached out to five members of the AUSG’s House of Representatives (HoR) from the concluding 2025-26 term: AUSG President Insha Husain (UG’26), Speaker of the House Sneha Menon (UG’26), former HoR member Karandeep Gill (UG’26), Tanisha Iyer (UG’26), and independent HoR member Ayush Solapurkar (UG’27).

HoR Missing Records, Lack of Accountability

In February, The Edict conducted a review of the Student Government (SG) Public Information Drive, and found that the HoR record of meetings and minutes had remained blank since the speaker’s elections back in June 2025, before the start of the Monsoon 2025 semester. All HoR members speaking to The Edict broadly confirmed that there were very infrequent meetings in this period. President Insha Husain acknowledged that the house had not been meeting regularly, but individual members had taken up work. Iyer and Menon reiterated similar issues, but said that independent groups such as (but not limited to) the Committee for Financial Accessibility, Inclusion and Resources (C-FAIR) and Committee on Institutional Conduct and Accountability (CICA) functioned “independently” despite the house “not meeting as much as [Menon] would have liked.” According to Menon, Solapurkar and Gill’s individual work through the committees they led (C-FAIR and CICA, respectively) was personally communicated to the rest of the members in lieu of house meetings. 

Husain further mentioned that resignations and the removal of members contributed to the impaired functioning of the house. This includes former Independent member Maryam Andleeb (UG’28), who had their AUSG membership officially revoked by the Vice-Chancellor before the start of the Monsoon semester, USF member Hima Madhu (UG’28), who resigned from the AUSG citing personal reasons, and the resignations of Vice-President Ahana Walanju (UG’25) and Gill in February 2026. After the first seat vacancies were formally announced in October 2025, no by-election process was initiated by the Ashoka University Election Commission (AUEC) following email conversations between the AUEC and AUSG and the appointment of a new Chief Election Commissioner (CEC). As of April 2026, by-elections have still failed to take place, leaving the HoR with only three members since February.

Solapurkar, on the other hand, conflated the lack of meetings with an issue of accountability within the SG. Drawing contrast with Leher, which Solapurkar formerly represented as an Undergraduate Council (UG Council)  member, he mentioned a hierarchy of meetings and information within the AUSG. “We [Leher] had a very heavy accountability measure where we had seniors who were just there to grill us,” he said. “We would have internal accountability debates at some points, and Leher didn't ever work as a block. USF votes as a block, thinks as a block. They have internal meetings that we do not get to be a part of.” Solapurkar’s criticisms of AUSG conduct echoed Walanju’s remarks about accountability after resigning as vice president in February: “Anyone in general in the SG should be held accountable for themselves… I don't think anyone was holding each other accountable for a job that they should have been doing.”

Communication with Administration

USF initially sought to change what they perceived as the “bureaucratic” nature of the AUSG. According to Husain, their goal was to work “outside the bureaucratic fold of the administration,” foregrounding a “pro-worker and pro-student” approach. However, following both the scanners and workers’ protests last year, Husain noted a significant shift in campus climate as concerns about backlash and potential disciplinary actions grew. This, in turn, weakened the “mobilisation capacity” of the AUSG.

At the same time, their relationship with the administration also changed. Unlike the previous AUSG, Husain explained that the incumbent collective faced increasingly restricted communication with any higher-level administration members. Informal channels that once allowed direct engagement with the administration were narrowed, with communications now being routed primarily through the Dean of Student Affairs (DSA). “Since Ahana and I got elected, the VC has never spoken to us,” Husain said. Despite writing to the Vice-Chancellor several times, the AUSG’s communications were not formally acknowledged. She further pointed to bureaucratic negotiations and delays, which often culminated in no tangible outcomes. Husain acknowledged that this may have appeared to be a collapse of accountability to students, while maintaining that internal accountability within the AUSG was not lost. 

For Gill, former HoR member from the USF seat, the same circumstances reflected other core issues. He highlighted that the party was stuck in an “in-betweenness,” unable to decide whether to engage with the administration or remain outside its bureaucratic folds. He maintained that policies proposed by the administration could have been met with alternative solutions from the AUSG, which instead never materialised. Describing the past year as one of “stasis,” he believed that the AUSG failed to effectively use platforms and opportunities available to it by virtue of its role as the primary body of student governance. Furthermore, Gill separated the work of the Residence Life Working Group from the rest of the AUSG, saying the Working Group independently came together to propose alternative proposals to certain policies, such as the Main Gate Infractions (MGI) policy, to the DSA.

Solapurkar saw this as an “approach problem” within the AUSG. According to him, “things can be sorted with the admin,” suggesting that the challenges were not solely a result of bureaucratic delays but the result of how AUSG chose to engage with the administration. Solapurkar identified a consistent “trust deficit” between the AUSG and the administration as the starting point of these issues. He highlighted that the power asymmetry between the AUSG and the administration within a university setting should have been recognised. According to him, the adversarial stance of the AUSG –“they hate us, we hate them”– proved counterproductive, especially in a context of unequal power relations. 

USF’s Ideology

As a collective, USF publicly maintained a commitment to a strong ‘ideology’ behind their politics, long preceding their AUSG election victory in the Spring 2025 semester. This term was a key driver of USF’s Presidential Campaign, with Husain and Walanju stressing the need for a “politics grounded in clear ideology” in the Presidential Debate prior to the AUSG elections. According to Husain, this ideology could be summed up by being “pro-student and pro-worker” in all their actions. One year later, USF members felt that their ideology, and the vision for the AUSG that emerged from it, remained solid. 

For USF, implementation of policies went hand in hand with student mobilization, as they saw active incorporation of students as integral to their plans. “I think we always continued to uphold the ideology that the collective started out with”, said Iyer, member of the HoR and UG Council from the USF. “Our vision has always maintained that we incorporate as many students as we can and make [them] feel like they can approach us. We always tried to incorporate the beliefs of many students, especially since the scanner strike which was the first such mass mobilization [of students] that we saw.”

However, Husain acknowledged that the realities of implementing policies based on their vision was bottlenecked by increased restrictions on student mobilization since the USF’s election: “The environment… made it almost impossible for us to implement our vision, because our vision could only be implemented if we were allowed to mobilise, if we were allowed to speak to the administration,” she said. 

Husain still maintained that the USF’s vision was not a failed one, given these circumstances, citing “support for the workers” during the Monsoon 2025 Housekeeping Staff strike, the work of the separate ministries throughout the year, and the successful Main Gate Infraction (MGI) policy introduced by the Residence Life Working Group. She noted that the AUSG “staying intact” during the period of heightened restrictions on mobilization and declining HoR numbers was a success for their term. 

Conversely, other HoR members expressed reservations about how well the USF’s ideology driven policies translated into outcomes. Solapurkar said there was an overall lack of effort in enacting policies: “We all have similar ideologies… but implementation is a different ballgame” He also mentioned that there was an increasing gap between the AUSG and the larger student body that became unbreachable: “I think we have lost touch with the students this year. This is not just with students who wouldn't care about SG before, but with the people who were expecting the most out of the SG. I feel like they have lost faith.”

Gill echoed equally strong critiques of policy implementation. He cited the lack of record-keeping, HoR meetings, and Council decision-making processes as limitations of what the AUSG could put into action, despite the solidity of their vision. According to him, the USF government’s goal of changing the "bureaucratic nature of the SG” led to them being caught in an unproductive middle ground, with little accountability towards carrying out the rest of their policy aims. “The SG has become an institution that no longer documents itself… or records the work it does,” he said. “The USF promised something very fresh and new to this campus, but then there's been no work put into making that a reality. We have destroyed the institution and not built anything new.” 

What of the USF, what of the AUSG?

Approaching the end of the academic year and USF’s term, several USF core members, including Husain, Iyer, Menon, Naisha Kamboj (UG’26) and Aditya Apurva (UG’26), are set to graduate, leaving large question marks over the future of the collective. With the Registrar finally inviting applications for a new Chief Election Officer (CEO), it remains to be seen whether any USF candidates will contest another AUSG election, and who will take up this mantle.

For a party which promised plenty, evaluations of the USF’s term will be mixed, with AUSG members within and outside the party criticising the lack of focused work put in throughout the year. As one of the loudest and most well-known parties in Ashokan student politics, time will tell how future AUSG representatives, and student politics as a whole, fill the shoes left behind by USF’s legacy. 

[Edited by Fatema Tambawalla]