The electoral map of student politics is showing another notable shift. Days after the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) secured three of the four key posts in the Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) elections, the organisation has registered a sweeping victory in Kerala, traditionally one of the strongest states for communists.
At the Government Sanskrit College in Tripunithura, ABVP won all 12 general seats in the student union election, ending four decades of SFI dominance at the institution. The result means the Leftist Students’ Federation of India (SFI) was left without a single seat among those 12 general positions.
The significance of the result goes beyond the numbers. Kerala has long been one of the principal centres of Left student politics, with SFI maintaining a substantial organisational presence across campuses. Tripunithura Government Sanskrit College was among the campuses where that influence had endured for decades. ABVP had already made gains at the college in the previous election, and this year’s complete sweep marks a further expansion of its presence.
The Tripunithura result also comes against the backdrop of a much larger political setback for the Left in Kerala. In the 2026 Kerala Assembly elections, the Congress-led United Democratic Front returned to power with 102 seats in the 140-member Assembly, while the communist alliance LDF was reduced to 35 seats, compared with 99 seats in 2021. The election ended the Left’s decade-long tenure in government in the state.
That makes the campus result particularly noteworthy. Kerala was widely regarded as the Left’s last remaining stronghold after its earlier defeats in West Bengal and Tripura. With the LDF now out of power in Kerala as well, a loss in a college long associated with SFI makes one question the electoral relevance of Left in the state.
Student politics was one area where the Left still used to dominate, as young, impressionable minds often tilt towards communism and socialism before life teaches them that these are not workable principles. But now, the Left is losing even there, and that too in the colleges they dominated for decades, in a state they dominated for years.
It will be premature to say that the Left has already become irrelevant in Kerala, like they became irrelevant in Bengal and Tripura, but the writing seems to be on the wall.
