New Delhi: When we thought that things couldn’t get any worse at the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which ruled India’s most populous state Uttar Pradesh not so long ago, the party is in news for another bewildering controversy. Mayawati, who succeeded her mentor and political ideologue Kanshiram to lead the cadre-based, ideologically-driven Ambedkarite movement of the Dalit marginalised communities, has regressed into a whimsical dynast. From leading the charge for social change, the BSP is today grappling with the family politics of its leader. Testament to that is the embarrassing public spillover of the perceived rumblings within her close family.
On March 3, Mayawati expelled her nephew and supposed political heir Akash Anand, from the BSP. She announced the step a day after she divested the 30-year-old from all responsibilities, including the post of national coordinator of the BSP. Mayawai did not explain what wrong Akash committed, if at all he indulged in any form of indiscipline. Instead, she laid the blame on Akash’s affinal kins, to suggest that he was being influenced by them.
Mayawati said that Akash’s father-in-law Ashok Siddharth – a former trusted aide of hers whom she even sent to the Rajya Sabha in 2016 – was influencing him and damaging his political career. Mayawati had already expelled Siddharth from the BSP in February and accused him of harming the political prospects of her nephew. The truth, however, is that the only person responsible for the family drama within the BSP and the premature crisis over Akash’s budding political journey, is Mayawati herself.
In a matter of five years, Akash, who started his political journey by standing in for his aunt at a rally in Agra in 2019, finds his stature diminished. Rather than grooming her nephew as a youth leader of the Dalits, who make up 21.5% of Uttar Pradesh’s population, and as her political successor, Mayawati’s unpredictable and inexplicable actions have reduced Akash to a pitiable figure.
The sudden demotion and expulsion of her political heir due to family matters marks a new low in the debacle of the BSP, and raises serious questions on Mayawati’s ability to steer the party towards any form of revival. What prompted her to take such steps and wash dirty linen in public, is anybody’s guess, given the opaque manner in which she functions and her iron-claw grip over its organisation.
Why did she humiliate her political heir and nephew for a second time in less than a year? There are several theories doing the rounds, like always. Did Mayawati act to serve the larger interest of the ruling party due to the threat of government agencies tightening the noose around the corruption and disproportionate assets charges faced by her and her family? Is it a reflection of her insecurity? Or could it be that Mayawati, who runs the BSP in an authoritarian manner, sensed a coup building against her? That her core supporters are frustrated due to her inactive, inaccessible, dubious and obsolete style of functioning is not a secret. They had hoped that Akash, with his foreign education, youthful energy, accessibility and enterprising rhetoric, would provide a fresh lens to the party and arrest its steadily declining fortunes.
The sequence of events indicate that the BSP is in chaos and its leader has lost the plot.
How the events unfolded
On February 12, Mayawati announced the expulsion of Siddharth, accusing him of factionalism and anti-party activities. His daughter Pragya married Akash in 2023. That familial connection was perceived to cement his already-significant position in the BSP. The expulsion came as a shock to BSP supporters.
On March 2, Mayawati, at a meeting of her party, justified Siddharth’s expulsion, saying that she did it in the interest of the party and movement. She accused him of indulging in the “disgusting act” of trying to weaken the party by dividing it into two factions. Even if the allegations were true, the ultimate responsibility for it lay on Mayawati herself, who has alienated large chunks of supporters and colleagues through her arbitrary ways.
In the same meeting, Mayawati announced that her nephew would no longer serve as the national coordinator of the party and that she would no longer have any political successor. She would continue to serve the party till her last breath. Mayawati insinuated that Akash was being influenced by his wife, who in turn was influenced by her father. Drawing this warped link, she took the moral high ground that like Kanshiram, she put the party’s interest before her family’s. However, this claim is ingenious to say the least.
For many years now, she has actively involved her brother Anand Kumar into the BSP’s affairs. With Akash’s entry in 2019, the family connection got even more prominent. As things stand, Anand is the vice-president of the BSP and also a national coordinator, replacing his son. Anand works behind the scenes from Delhi, handling paperwork, official filings and managing public meetings for his sister.
While appointing Anand as a national coordinator, Mayawati said her brother had never disappointed her or hurt the party or the BSP movement in any way. In a remarkable claim, she also said that Anand had decided that to avoid a Siddharth-type incident in future, he would marry his other children to persons from non-political families.
The ‘immature’ label
It appears like a deja vu for Akash but the situation actually seems worse from what happened over the last year.
First, in December 2023, Mayawati declared Akash as her successor. But only a few months later, in the middle of the 2024 Lok Sabha election, when Akash was gaining popularity as a vocal critic of the Narendra Modi government, she clipped his wings and dethroned him as her political heir. She argued that he was not behaving ‘mature’ enough. It was highly speculated that she withdrew him to protect the interest of the saffron party government.
By publicly labelling him as immature, Mayawati not only put a roadblock on his political journey but also diminished him politically in the public eye. Such labels have a long-lasting impact in politics.
What act of immaturity Akash had committed was left to media speculation. After grounding him during the peak of the election, where the young Akash would have gained valuable field experience and was learning the art of public speeches, Mayawati suddenly reinstated him as her “sole heir” weeks after the results were declared.
This time too, she did not provide a clear explanation. All she said was she hoped that Akash would emerge as a mature leader. Her infantilisation of Akash reemphasised the point that she considered him unfit for the toss and tumble of UP’s volatile politics.
While unceremoniously expelling Akash from the party on March 3, Mayawati again used the maturity argument to diminish him. She said that after he was removed from all posts on March 2, he should have repented and displayed more maturity. She took offence to a long social post Akash wrote on X and decided that this was not a sign of remorse or political maturity. It was a “selfish, arrogant and non-missionary” reaction, she said.
Akash’s response to her was anything but immature. In the post, he wrote that he respected his aunt’s decision as he was a cadre of the BSP and Behenji and had learned unforgettable lessons of sacrifice, loyalty and dedication under her leadership.
“The decision of respected Behenji Mayawati ji to relieve me from all the posts of the party is personally emotional for me, but at the same time it is a big challenge, the test is difficult and the fight is long. Like a true worker of Bahujan Mission and movement, I will continue to work with full devotion for the party and mission and will keep fighting for the rights of my society till my last breath,” said Akash before he was expelled.
He also stressed that this did not mean his career was over. The Bahujan movement was not a career for him but a fight for self-respect and self-esteem of crores of Dalits, exploited, deprived and poor people, he stressed. “This is an idea, a movement, which cannot be suppressed. Lakhs of Akash Anands are always ready to keep this torch burning and sacrifice everything for it,” wrote Akash.
Only Mayawati can explain what was offensive in Akash’s reaction. But what’s clear is that her seemingly-erratic political decisions have harmed Akash’s reputation and exposed the directionless mechanism through which she has been running the party handed to her by her mentor Kanshiram. The elephant in the room has been widely acknowledged.
It was due to the vacuum left by Mayawati, following her loss of power in 2012, that creed space for smaller Dalit outfits such as Chandra Shekhar Aazad’s Bhim Army and Ambedkar Jan Morcha in East Uttar Pradesh, to name a few, to emerge as the voice of the Dalits. Mayawati, who has virtually disappeared from the public scene, today resembles a dynast with no vision or strategy. She has wilfully ceded the Bahujan political space and most of her trusted colleagues and local mass leaders, who worked under Kanshiram, have left for other parties. In several cases, they have accused her of malpractices and ignoring the path of her mentor.
Mayawati’s poor decision-making, shift from core Bahujan politics to appeasing dominant castes, dubious proximity to the incumbent, silence on critical Dalit issues, disconnect from the public mood and now, toying with the political career of her heir-apparent, have created an unprecedented crisis for the BSP. This has left Akash with little option but to chart out his own political journey, one that takes him away from the shadows of his aunt, who now appears rudderless and antiquated.
