Venkaiah Naidu Asks Students to Shun Politics, But Did He?

Venkaiah Naidu objects to students entering politics but the minister seems to have forgotten about his student days.

Union Minister for Urban Development, M Venkaiah Naidu has again raised an objection on students pursuing politics. Naidu criticised Kanhaiya for using JNU for political purposes.

They (students) must study and stay away from politics. If they are interested in politics, they can leave studies and join politics. He (Kanhaiya Kumar) can join any political party. His favourite party (the CPI) is now in single digits in Parliament. Let him join that party.

M Venkaiah Naidu, Minister, Urban Development & Parliamentary Affairs

This is the second time that Naidu has contended that students, especially in state-funded universities, should only “study”. Earlier in February, Naidu objected to the use of state-funded university campuses for ‘political and anti-national activities’.

However, Naidu comfortably forgot that if students were to stay away from politics, he himself would not have been a leader of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP); we probably may not have heard the Budget last week from Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, a student leader during the Emergency. A host of other leaders- from Home Minister Rajnath Singh to former Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav would have remain unheard of.

Venkaiah Naidu, 66, Bharatiya Janata Party

Apart from being the students’ union president of his college in Nellore and Andhra University, Naidu was also the convener of Lok Nayak Jai Prakash (JP) Narayan Chhatra Sangharsh Samiti (students agitation committee) of Andhra Pradesh.

Urban development and parliamentary affairs minister today, Naidu joined JP’s nationwide political movement against the authoritarianism of Indira Gandhi.

Arun Jaitley, 63, Bharatiya Janata Party

At 22, Jaitley became president of the Delhi University Students Union (DUSU) in 1974, a year before then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed Emergency.

Active in student politics, Jaitley became Additional Solicitor General, lawyer of the Government of India at 37. The debating skills he learned at college stood him in good steam during ministerial stints handling information and broadcasting, disinvestment, law and justice, shipping and finance.

Rajnath Singh, 66, Bharatiya Janata Party

Singh, India’s home minister, was the organisational secretary of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad or ABVP (Gorakhpur unit) from 1969 to 1971, before he hit 20.

Nitin Gadkari, 58, Bharatiya Janata Party

He entered politics as a student leader of ABVP, Nagpur and later joined the Janata Yuva Morcha, the youth wing of the BJP. He handles the road transport ministry today.

Prafulla Kumar Mahanta, 64, Asom Gana Parishad

Prafulla Mahanta led the Assam agitation as the president of All Assam Students Union (AASU). He was 27 then.

His campaign against illegal immigrants and the student movement that followed made him not just popular, but Assam’s youngest chief minister–and India’s second youngest ever–at the age of 33.

Ajay Maken, 52 , Congress

He became a member of the Delhi legislative assembly at the age of 29, after he started his political career at the age of 21 by becoming the president of Delhi University Students Union (DUSU), 10 years after Jaitley.

Maken has been a minister of state (home) and a cabinet minister with the urban development portfolio in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government from 2009 to 2014.

Prakash Karat, 68, Communist Party of India (Marxist); DP Tripathi, 64, Nationalist Congress Party; Sitaram Yechury, 64, Communist Party of India (Marxist)

These three leaders of Students Federation of India (SFI) successively became the presidents of the JNU Students’ Union between 1974 and 1977; Karat in 1974; Tripathi in 1975 and Yechury in 1977.

Tripathi moved to the Congress and became strategy planner for former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, and later joined the Nationalist Congress Party on its formation in 1999.

Yechury became the general secretary of CPI(M) in 2015, succeeding Prakash Karat and will lead the party in the assembly elections in four states scheduled in April and May.

Lalu Prasad Yadav, 67, Rashtriya Janata Dal; Ravi Shankar Prasad, 61, Bharatiya Janata Party; Sushil Kumar Modi, 64, Bharatiya Janata Party

All three of them started their political career in Patna University. Ravi Shankar Prasad was the assistant to Sushil Kumar Modi, who was General Secretary, with Lalu Prasad Yadav as the President in 1972.

Ram Manohar Lohia, one of the prominent leaders not just in the freedom movement but also in the social transformation after independence was involved in student politics in Berlin, Germany in 1929.