Politics in student unions is not quite an issue that lends scope for double-think to run wild. To dispel the prevalent misconception, the decision to put in place de-politicised student bodies in the campuses isn’t quite the prescription of the West Bengal government, but the Lyngdoh Commission’s.

Yet the fact that it has signalled its intent to execute the recommendation, in the manner of St Xavier’s College, does inspire a scintilla of hope in the academic circuit given the traditionally turbulent campuses. Regretfully though, eyebrows are bound to be raised over the Chief Minister’s presentation to mark the foundation day of the Trinamul Congress Chhatra Parishad.

While Mamata Banerjee buttressed the importance of an apolitical students’ council ~ which is how it should be ~ she hastened to emphasise that the ruling party’s student wing ought to “take responsibility” to ensure Trinamul’s victory in next year’s panchayat elections which the party leader deems to be a prologue to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

Academic pursuit and elections to the quangos and legislatures are two very different propositions.

The pointed reference to the parliamentary elections can be contextualised with her participation in Lalu Prasad’s anti-BJP rally in Patna a day earlier. The stark disconnect between apolitical unions and student involvement in general elections is said to have bamboozled the audience and the political class generally.

Arguably, she is anxious to ensure a committed cadre in the vicinity of polling booths, as witnessed during the high noon of the CPI-M.

But the objective of her fundamental message has been diluted. She would without question have reaped greater goodwill had she focused her address on the dire imperative of de-politicised campuses.

Involvement in legislative elections runs counter to the state government’s order in June that stipulates that student unions will be “apolitical” and politics would henceforth be dissociated from union activities. The other provision, to assign a teacher to handle the allocation of funds to the union, is suggestive of a fiscal foozle during campus elections, not to forget the union’s spin-off in many colleges during the admission season.

“This is an important step,” Banerjee told the meeting.

“Interference of outsiders in campuses will not be tolerated.” She will, therefore, be expected to rein in the ruling party activists who have on occasion gone berserk and even killed a police sub-inspector during college elections in Kolkata’s Garden Reach. It is quite another story that the intrepid Police Commissioner was moved out following the arrest of the accused, a Trinamul councillor, but it does point to the spread of the canker throughout West Bengal. Not wholly unrelated is the induction of potential goons into the college committees, a trend that the Trinamul MP, Saugata Roy, once decried as “read up to Class 8 types” running colleges.