West Bengal Assembly election 2021, Aishe Ghosh profile: JNUSU president to contest from Jamuria on CPM ticket

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has fielded JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh, whose images showing her bandaged forehead were widely circulated and criticised during the 2020 JNU fee hike movement, from the Jamuria constituency in the upcoming West Bengal polls. Ghosh will be among a long list of JNUSU presidents who entered state and national politics, others being DP Tripathi, Prakash Karat, Sitaram Yechury, Chandrashekhar Prasad, Shakeel Ahmed Khan, Tanvir Akhtar and Kanhaiya Kumar. She is the first sitting JNUSU president to contest Assembly polls. After completing her school from Durgapur in West Bengal, she joined Delhi University’s Daulat Ram College, from where she graduated in political science. It was at this time that she entered student politics and joined the Students’ Federation of India. She then enrolled at JNU for a Masters’ degree, following which she enrolled for an MPhil at the School of International Relations in JNU. She is now a PhD student. She became the JNUSU president in 2019, a post claimed by the SFI after 13 years. It was during her tenure that violence was witnessed at the JNU campus, when she was injured and admitted to AIIMS Trauma Centre. She had then led protests demanding action against perpetrators. Ghosh was among the nine students that the Delhi Police named in an FIR in connection with the 5 January violence at the JNU campus. She also led protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and when JNU professor Atul Johri was accused of sexual harassment. Ghosh’s father Debasish is an employee of Damodar Valley Corporation and has been associated with the Centre for Indian Trade Unions (CITU), the labour wing of CPM. The Jamuria Assembly constituency lies in the Paschim Bardhaman district and will go to polls in the seventh phase on 26 April. It is a part of the Asansol Lok Sabha constituency. Elections for the West Bengal Assembly will be held in eight phases, up from seven last time, beginning with polling for 30 seats on 27 March. The second phase of West Bengal’s assembly elections has been scheduled for 1 April and will cover 30 constituencies, followed by the third phase on 6 April for 31 seats, the fourth on 10 April for 44 constituencies, the fifth on 17 April for 45 seats, sixth for 43 seats on 22 April, seventh phase on 26 April for 36 seats and last and eighth phase on 29 April for 35 seats. The results of the election will be declared on 2 May.