The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati publicly humiliating her nephew and political heir Akash Anand for the third successive year is a new low even for her erratic eccentricity.
Coming as it does just a few months before the crucial Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, it is the latest blow to a party desperately struggling to survive in what was considered a decade ago as her political bastion.
Anand, 30, had been inducted nearly three years ago by Behenji as her successor, ostensibly to rejuvenate the rapidly declining BSP, abandoned by a growing number of young Dalits in recent years.
But she herself has shattered his credibility by forcing him on a bizarre rollercoaster ride, propelling him up and down in rapid succession.
The young BSP leader’s fluctuating fortunes have seen him being anointed as her political successor in December 2023, abruptly sacked from his post in the middle of the 2024 Parliamentary poll campaign for harshly criticising the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as “terrorist” and “Taliban”, his power reinstated soon after the elections, thrown out again a year later for anti-party activities along with his father-in-law and veteran BSP leader Ashok Sidharth, reinstalled after an abject apology but now once again stripped of his post for being “politically immature”.
A Jibe at BJP Costs Anand His Job
Insiders in the BSP revealed that the latest blunder by Anand that cost him his job, was a rousing speech at Jewar in Greater Noida late August that savagely indicted both the BJP state and Central government.
Flagging off the 2027 election campaign, announcing the name of the local BSP candidate, the young Dalit leader, much like his aunt in her early activist days, used both rhetorical flourish and sarcastic wit to expose the many unfulfilled promises by the ruling party.
Although he also criticised the Congress and the Samajwadi Party, the bulk of the speech was a frontal assault on the BJP which was repeatedly cheered by the sizeable crowd.
Sources close to the BSP indicated that Mayawati was upset that nephew and successor had departed so drastically from her own measured and tame speeches. She is also believed to have been influenced by her chief adviser, confidante and lawyer Satish Mishra, who is known to be close to the BJP, that it was unwise for such a senior party leader to upset the state administration at such a sensitive period before the elections. Significantly, Satish Mishra already hugely influential has become even more powerful in recent weeks after the recent expulsion of the other important BSP Brahmin leader Anant Kumar Mishra for anti-party activities.
Mayawati last month announced that the lawyer-turned-politician would be assigned more responsibilities in view of the coming elections and would be responsible for dealing with the Election Commission as well as his other responsibilities in managing legal and media matters.
A veteran Dalit activist who was earlier close to the BSP supremo lamented, “Behenji has grown increasingly dependent on her lawyer’s advice and nobody else in the party really matters”.
There is also talk of a revival of the Dalit-Brahmin alliance supposedly forged by Satish Mishra that swept the BSP to an incredible victory nearly two decades ago.
Yet, there appears to be no sign of any surge of fresh support for Mayawati among Brahmins who abandoned her long ago as has other caste groups across the board, along with Muslims ,who now feel that under Satish Mishra’s influence the BSP has become a B-team for the BJP.
An Heir, Denied
Interestingly, while Akash Anand was missing from both the party meetings held by Mayawati to discuss Uttar Pradesh and national affairs, the new face that was prominent in the front rows was Prince Yukesh Singh, the son of the late BSP leader Uma Shankar Singh, a Thakur businessman from Ballia in eastern Uttar Pradesh. The recently deceased leader, a wealthy construction magnate who faced corruption charges that were later withdrawn with the help of the Uttar Pradesh government, had won three successive Assembly elections from Rasra constituency.
BSP insiders said that Prince Yukesh, who has inherited his father’s business, was being groomed to take over his political mantle.
There is also some consternation among Mayawati’s dwindling Dalit supporters about her surprising pursuit for electoral support from communities like Brahmin, Thakurs, and Jats who have traditionally been hostile to them.
They were surprised at Mayawati's open support to Jat leader Jayant Chaudhary in the latter’s recent verbal battle with Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav. Indeed, considering the long battle between Dalits and Jats in western Uttar Pradesh, it is baffling how the most important Dalit leader has come out in defence of “the dignity of the Jat community”.
This confused strategy by Mayawati not prioritising her goals of getting back her core Jatav base along with other Dalits before thinking of a grander all-caste alliance may cost her in the coming elections. Although the alternative Dalit leader Chandrasekhar Azad does not have either the professional cadre or Mayawati's vast financial resources, he does have considerable personal charisma and a motivated volunteer force.
While this may not be enough to win Azad’s party many seats, unless he comes to a deal or at least an understanding with the INDIA bloc, he is likely to draw away even more of the BSP base which dropped in the last Parliamentary polls to just nine percent.
Mayawati could have arrested further decline and even improved her miserable performance in the last Assembly election of just a single seat, had she allowed Akash Anand to at least put up a serious fight as an Opposition party to the government. But playing snakes and ladders with a political heir who should be mandated to reinvent the BSP into a serious force again in Uttar Pradesh is more akin to political suicide.
(The writer is a Delhi-based senior journalist and the author of ‘Behenji: A Political Biography of Mayawati’. This is an opinion piece. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)