Leher, a Dominant Wave: Ruptures & Continuities in Ashokan Student Politics

In the weeks following the AY 2025-26 Ashoka University Student Government (AUSG) elections, an unusual quiet settled over Ashoka’s political landscape. The change was most noticeable in the sudden absence of Leher,  a major student political party that had, until recently, been central to AUSG functioning and campus political activity.  Yet in an email dated April 30, 2025, the Ashoka University Election Commission (AUEC) announced that Leher had been formally disbanded due to its failure to submit the Collective Registration Form within the required time: 

“According to Chapter 8, Sec. 8.3 of the Election Code, any collective failing to fill out the required form for two consecutive cycles — i.e., two consecutive six-month update cycles as per the Collective Registry rules — will be removed from the registry, and as such, both Leher and Toofaan collectives have been dissolved.”

Leher's success and demise highlighted a broader question: how did a party that became the primary vehicle for student politics at Ashoka dissolve so quickly and quietly? The Edict reached out to former members to understand the rise and fall of Leher and broader political dynamics at Ashoka.

Leher as an Early Site of Political Engagement

To understand Leher’s formation, it is necessary to revisit the political conditions of 2021-22. After extended periods of online learning during COVID-19 and administrative disruptions, the AUSG existed largely in a transitional capacity. No on-campus election had taken place since 2020, and the functioning AUSG was an interim body with a small group of students informally maintaining essential operations. Political engagement was at a historic low; the Constitution Drafting Committee elections of April 2022 saw minimal turnout and several seats that barely met validity thresholds. 

Against this backdrop, five students — Sankalp Dasmohapatra (UG ‘23), Harsh Gupta (UG ‘24), Rochan Mohapatra (UG ‘24), Pankhudi Narayan (UG ‘24), and Yasashvi Paraakh (UG ‘24) — began discussing the need to revive structured student politics. Between February and April 2022, they met informally to consider what rebuilding such a space would require. According to Dasmohapatra, political discourse and mobilisation had declined significantly, with many students reporting a feeling of disconnect from institutional political processes. The founders of Leher believed that a formal political party and the organised methods of the AUSG could help re-establish both. On April 30th, 2022, they announced the formation of Leher. Their stated objective was to restore the AUSG’s legitimacy and reintroduce an organised political culture on campus.

Perspectives from within Leher

For many first-year students who joined Ashoka later that year, Leher was the only visible structure engaging with student concerns. Speaking to The Edict, Ahana Walanju (UG ’25), current Vice-President of the AUSG, recalls that the party was actively addressing everyday infrastructural and administrative issues, which made it a practical entry point into student governance. She also recalled the decision to join Leher, calling it “one of the most pivotal moments of perhaps my life.” For Walanju,  Leher offered access to seniors already involved in AUSG operations, allowing her to learn through direct involvement that she was “naturally inclined to the kind of work they do.” 

However, Walanju, who is now a part of the United Students’ Front (USF), became more critical of Leher’s modus operandi. USF is a left-aligned, independent student forum founded in March 2024 during the AUSG elections. The collective initially garnered attention through organising the largest student-led fundraiser in Ashoka’s history and has since remained a popular political collective in AUSG workings. Walanju also mentioned that Leher, as a party, struggled to “articulate the ideology in a more radical way” and therefore relied on functioning within the administration’s bureaucratic mechanisms. “When you only rely on that [bureaucratic mechanism] as a means to achieve any sort of student welfare, I think that does more harm to a more resilient student community than good.” she added. 

Similarly, for Rishit Roy (UG ‘25), who entered Ashoka with an interest in political engagement, Leher was appealing because it was the only group whose outreach focused on new students. Roy was particularly drawn to an early proposal for a National Engagement Committee, which aimed to connect Ashoka students with nearby panchayats and grassroots initiatives. Although the committee never took shape, it introduced a broader vision of political engagement that distinguished Leher from existing structures. Leher was still a young party when Roy joined; apart from getting the AUSG up and running, the party also emphasised the aim to “collect student issues and solve them.” Roy attributed this systematic problem-solving approach to the party’s lack of a unified identity or ideology. 

Aditi Warrier (UG ‘24), who had previously been part of the Allied Socialist Syndicate (ASS), rejoined campus politics through Leher during her third semester. ASS was a short-lived student political party, comprising first-years, during AY 21-22. Warrier recalled that Leher’s executive committee held broadly liberal or left-leaning positions, which aligned with her own political orientation, making for a smooth transition. Warrier mentions that as Leher phased out and USF — which she described as a party that “had this desire to engage politics in a different way than just to revive it” — became more dominant on campus, she felt that her and other members of Leher, “hadn’t noticed many things about our own ideology and our own idea of what a student government should be that were fundamentally distinct from USF.”

Ideological Openness and Its Discontents

Soon after its formation, ideology became one of Leher’s most debated issues. During the drafting of the party’s constitution, founders discussed whether to explicitly identify as liberal or left-leaning. They ultimately opted to keep the ideological framework open, noting that it was hard to build any kind of ideological support due to the low level of political engagement on campus at the time. As a result, new members entered a party that had broad political tendencies but claimed to have no formalised ideological identity. According to Dasmohapatra, as a founder of the party, “The idea was to keep it open where ideology was meant to be broad-based to invite political participation" and that “wasn't for any individual to compromise on their ideology, but it was also a compromise that was made by virtue of the fact that there was such little political discourse in the Ashokan sphere at that time”

This openness eventually produced internal ambiguity. Walanju remembers disagreements about whether the party should describe itself as left-leaning. Both Roy and Walanju attribute the lack of ideological coherence to the party’s composition, noting that many members were from metropolitan backgrounds and had limited exposure to identity-based political experiences. The result was a membership that cared about student issues but did not share a clearly defined ideological perspective, which at the time was consistent with the vision of Leher’s founders. 

External critiques mirrored these internal uncertainties. Leher was described by some students as “non-ideological” or excessively bureaucratic. Members, however, maintained that the party had principles but struggled to articulate them in a structured way. The challenges of grounding its work in a political framework were compounded by its rapid growth and the varying priorities of its members.

Governing Without a Shared Internal Politics

Disagreements about ideology was one of the party’s internal tensions.. Although Leher presented itself publicly as a horizontal collective, internal decision-making was complicated by divergent priorities and differing understandings of political engagement. Walanju mentions that at an open meeting in 2023, representatives from Ashoka University Queer Collective (AUQC) and the Northeast Collective criticised the party for insufficient engagement with the concerns of marginalised student groups, suggesting that Leher at times adopted a problem-solving posture without sufficiently understanding or engaging with the structural issues underlying such problems.

Despite these challenges, the party played a central role in re-establishing electoral and governance structures. The first full in-person AUSG election since 2020, held in September 2022, featured Leher as the only political party. For a period, it became synonymous with student governance, and its members served as key figures in the reactivated political environment.

However, as student politics regained momentum, the campus political atmosphere evolved. Engagement increased, but so did divergence. While some students became more politically active, others grew less interested in AUSG processes. This polarisation influenced Leher’s trajectory, particularly as new political formations emerged.

By mid-2023, Leher’s internal capacity had diminished. According to Roy, the party struggled to identify juniors willing to continue its work, and many who were initially interested gravitated toward the newly forming USF, which offered a more defined ideological framework. Warrier notes that by that point she and others felt Leher had fulfilled its foundational purpose of reviving student politics and lacked a clear direction for future work.

Leher’s failure to submit the Collective Registration Form for 2 consecutive semesters was therefore less symptomatic of a sudden dissolution, and rather a confirmation of an internal decline already underway. The administrative lapse signalled that there was no longer a cohesive group maintaining the organisation.

On Leher’s Afterlife

The party’s legacy remained visible. The election of former Leher members in the 2024-25 by-election demonstrated continued trust in individuals associated with the organisation. More broadly, Leher’s efforts to renew political engagement created conditions that increased the overall visibility of student politics on campus.

Leher’s influence on Ashoka is thus substantive but complex. It revived a dormant political system, introduced many students to governance, and set the stage for stronger ideological formations to emerge. At the same time, its inability to define its long-term role contributed to its eventual dissolution. Its impact can be measured less by its lifespan than by the structures and political consciousness it helped re-establish. Even after its formal end, Leher continues to shape student politics through the individuals it brought into public life and the discussions it made possible. The irony was that the party that revived student politics was outgrown by the very political awakening it catalysed.

(Edited by Anamta Husain and Somansh Sarangi)