Women students at Aligarh Muslim University joined the campaign for long-pending students’ union elections on Sunday. The protest is now in its second week of a hunger strike by a fellow student Yasir Fahad.
Students marched from Allama Iqbal Hall to Duck Pond, raising slogans against the university administration. When the march reached Duck Pond, a large number of women students sat down in a dharna in support of the demand. They wrote “We Want AMUSU or Death” on the ground, a reference to the Aligarh Muslim University Students’ Union.
The protest centres on Yasir Fahad, a first-year MA Urdu student, who has been on hunger strike since September 21. Amar Ujala describes him as a suspended student. Fahad said he weighed 67 kg when he began and 63 kg by the seventh day, on September 27.
The movement has also drawn support from outside the campus. Aditi, president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union, said no students’ union election has been held at AMU since 2018-19. She said the students’ demand should be heard rather than suppressed, and that JNUSU stands with them.
The union election issue has been building for months. In August 2025, students protested a fee hike and the absence of union polls, and the administration reportedly assured them elections would be held in December 2025. That promise has not been kept.
In January and February this year, students staged a continuous sit-in that ran for weeks. It drew support from public figures, though a Jammu and Kashmir MP was stopped from entering the campus to meet the protesters.
The university administration has not publicly announced a date for elections.
