"We have won the election, which is a thing to be pleased about, but our party has also lost a senior leader Arun Jaitley, who was also a student union leader," Goa Bharatiya Yuva Morcha (BJYM) spokesperson Siddesh Naik Dessai told reporters on Monday, dedicating the victory to the 66-year-old leader, who died following prolonged illness on Saturday.
Jaitley served as the president of the Delhi University Students Union in 1974 as a member of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP).
Incidentally, in the Goa University Students Council Elections, the BJP-backed panel defeated their rival panel floated by the ABVP with a margin of 63-22, with the Congress-backed National Students Union of India boycotting the polls.
State president of the BJYM Gajanan Tilve accused the ABVP of indulging in foul practices and tying up with the NSUI to defeat the saffron party's panel of candidates.
"ABVP flung bottles at us. They were responsible for the chaos during elections. The ABVP were desperate and they had tied up with NSUI. We cannot call them brothers," Tilve said.
The ABVP has been backed by the former state RSS chief Subhash Velingkar, who was sacked from the Sangh two years ago, for his opposition to the policies and decisions of the BJP-led coalition government in Goa.
( With inputs from IANS )