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Is Mayawati's Mid-Election Purge of Nephew, Candidates Aimed at Rescuing BJP?

Since Mayawati rarely meets journalists, and nobody in the party is authorised to explain her decisions publicly, speculation is rife over the likely reason behind her latest flip.
Akash Anand against a backdrop of a Mayawati poster. Photo: X/@AnandAkash_BSP

New Delhi: Mayawati, the Bahujan Samaj Party supremo, may have developed a knack for delivering political shocks but her sudden decision to dethrone her nephew Akash Anand as her successor as well as the party’s national coordinator in the middle of the 2024 election has baffled everyone. Right when Akash Anand had started to catch the imagination of the Dalit youth with his fiery speeches and aggressive stance against BSP’s political rivals, his aunt Mayawati not only decided to withdraw him from serious responsibilities but also politically diminished him in public view by rating him as immature.

Mayawati’s decision came more than a week after Akash was booked by police for making provocative remarks against the Bharatiya Janata Party government during a rally in Sitapur.

In his speech on April 28, Akash equated the BJP government with the Taliban in Afghanistan and accused it of behaving like terrorists. “The BJP is not a bulldozer government but a government of terrorists. They have enslaved the people,” said Akash in Sitapur. The speech was found to violate the Model Code of Conduct and police registered an FIR against Akash and four others under various acts.

In a series of tweets on X, Mayawati on May 7, hours after voting for the third phase of election in Uttar Pradesh concluded, announced her decision to remove Akash from the post of BSP’s national coordinator and as her political successor till he attained “full maturity.”

Mayawati said the decision was taken in the “larger interest” of the party and the BSP movement but did reveal where and how Akash had displayed his lack of maturity.

Mayawati, while stating that Akash’s father, and her brother, Anand Kumar would continue to serve as the party’s vice-president, underlined that she was not going to shy away from making “every kind of sacrifice in the interest of the party and the movement, and taking forward the caravan of” B. R Ambedkar.

Since Mayawati rarely meets journalists, and nobody in the party is authorised to explain her decisions publicly, speculation is rife over the likely reason behind her latest flip.

It is unlikely that Mayawati, who has promoted her brother and nephew politically, had a sudden realisation of indulging in nepotism. Over the years, the BSP’s second rung leadership has been virtually wiped out, primarily due to Mayawati’s own inertia, diversion from Bahujan politics and doubtful political affiliation, where she is often seen acting under the pressure of the incumbent party.

Several senior BSP leaders have left the party in recent years accusing her of malpractices or ignoring the path of her mentor Kanshiram. This coincided with her introducing her London-educated nephew Akash to politics and promoting him as the youth face of the party.

After starting his political career by standing in for his aunt at a rally in Agra in 2019, after she was banned from campaigning, Akash has come a long way. In the ongoing election, he introduced a degree of freshness to the BSP’s usually lacklustre and bland campaign, which was restricted to Mayawati reading out long, dreary written notes and disappearing from public view till the next event.

Photo: X/@BhimArmyChief

Akash, though still a political novice, was emerging as the BSP’s response to the popularity of young Dalit leader Chandra Shekhar Azad, whom the BSP has been trying to cut to size. The BSP feels Azad could cut into its votes and potentially, in the long run at least, emerger as a contender for Dalit leadership in the state. That poses him as a direct threat to the career of Akash Anand. In his speeches, Akash was directly targeting the BJP government and PM Modi on questions of livelihood and doing it through hard data and numbers. “Your children will become labourers,” he said at a rally in west UP, after dishing out data on the number of unemployed youth in the country and underlining the poor state of schools.

Akash also took on the Modi government’s free ration scheme, saying that in return for distributing free ration worth Rs 6,000 to each individual per year, the BJP was snatching away jobs that would fetch them a monthly salary of at least Rs 15,000-20,000.

It would also be unusual if Mayawati acted against her nephew for his remarks against the BJP and invited an FIR. Political FIRs are common in the country and the FIR against Akash was unlikely to dent his career.

The answer to Mayawati’s sudden decision to demote her nephew could lie in the BSP’s strategy in the 2024 election, where the party has changed candidates on more than a dozen occasions, often under dubious circumstances. The change of candidates in Jaunpur and Basti in East UP is a case in point. That the BSP often comes to the rescue of the ruling BJP has gained weight over the years after the party openly supported the BJP in at least two Rajya Sabha elections, including the one held earlier this year.  Questions were also raised over Mayawati’s motivations after she abruptly broke off her alliance with the SP after the 2019 election despite gaining the most out of it, winning 10 seats as against the SP’s five. In 2014, the BSP had failed to open its score.

The battle in Jaunpur shot into the limelight after the BSP decided to field zilla panchayat president Shrikala Singh, wife of convicted former MP Dhananjay Singh, as its candidate. Shrikala’s entry made matters tough for the BJP candidate Kripa Shankar Singh as both belong to the Thakur community. Dhananjay Singh, through his wife, was bound to hurt the BJP through his clout among the Thakurs in Jaunpur. Shrikala’s candidature also made life a bit easier for the Samajwadi Party candidate Babu Singh Kushwaha, an OBC. The matter got more intense after the Allahabad High Court decided to grant Dhananjay bail and released him from jail right in time for campaigning.

Shrikala Singh. Photo: X/@ShrikalaSingh

However, at the last moment, Mayawati replaced Shrikala Singh with sitting MP Shyam Singh Yadav, who would now, rather than denting the BJP, pose a threat to the SP, which relies heavily on support of the Yadav community, who are a dominant political force in Jaunpur.

The BSP’s Varanasi division coordinator Ghanshyam Chandra Kharwar said Shrikala Singh refused to contest and backed out due to “some pressure” faced by her husband, who is known as a Thakur muscleman leader. “The BSP did not cut her ticket. She refused to contest,” said Kharwar, stressing that the party had finalised Shrikala’s ticket and named a new candidate only after she withdrew.

Dhananjay Singh, however, termed this as false. He said that the BSP replaced his wife and was spreading lies to defend itself for its decision. There was no “pressure” on him, Singh said, while talking to reporters.

Singh accused the BSP of trying to mislead people and defame him. He even went to the extent to speculate that the BSP might have named his wife as candidate and then suddenly dropped her as part of a political ploy.

“It must be their working style,” said Singh, as he pointed out that the BSP had also changed its candidates in other important constituencies.

He was right. In the same list featuring along with Shyam Singh Yadav’s name was Lavkush Patel, who was declared candidate in Basti in place of Daya Shankar Mishra, a Brahmin. What’s notable is that the BJP’s sitting MP Harish Dwivedi is a Brahmin while the BSP’s new candidate is an OBC Kurmi, just like the SP’s candidate Ram Prasad Chaudhary. The new equation is likely to hurt the Opposition alliance, with the BSP cutting into its Kurmi votes.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty

The BSP has also changed its candidates in other important seats, including Mainpuri, Azamgarh, Mathura, Firozabad, Varanasi and Amethi. In Mainpuri, where SP president Akhilesh Yadav’s wife Dimple Yadav contested, the BSP replaced its Shakya candidate Gulshan Dev Shakya with a Yadav, Shiv Prasad Yadav, possibly cutting into the SP’s core voter base.

In Azamgarh, the BSP had fielded a Rajbhar, Bhim Rajbhar, its former state president. This was likely to hurt the BJP as Rajbhars are more inclined to support the BJP. But the BSP changed the candidate in Azamgarh, replacing Rajbhar with a Muslim, Mashud Ahmad, in what could make matters potentially tricky for the SP’s Dharmendra Yadav, Akhilesh’s cousin, who is hoping for a consolidation of Yadavs and Muslims. In Firozabad, where another Yadav family candidate Akshay Yadav contested, the BSP replaced a Hindu candidate with a Muslim, Chaudhary Basheer. In Varanasi against Narendra Modi, the BSP changed its candidate thrice, eventually settling on the original choice Athar Jamal Lari, a Muslim. In Amethi, where the Congress’ KL Sharma is contesting, the BSP had fielded Ravi Prakash Maurya but replaced him with another candidate Nanhe Singh Chauhan only a day later. The BSP has fielded a Yadav, Thakur Prasad Yadav, against Rahul Gandhi in Rae Bareli, where the Congress leader would heavily depend on the support of the SP’s core vote base.

The BSP has fielded at least 20 Muslims this time. UP has 80 seats. The BSP’s Muslim candidates include Qamar Hayat Ansari, who has been fielded against the SP’s senior OBC leader and former Mayawati-aide Lalji Verma in Ambedkar Nagar, and Muslim Khan, who contested against Akhilesh’s cousin Aditya Yadav in Budaun, which has a decent population of Muslims.

With the election moving east, away from the Jatav stronghold areas of the BSP in the west, to the Yadav-dominated seats, Akhilesh Yadav has appealed Bahujan Samaj voters to not waste their vote on the BSP, accusing it of helping the BJP, “either openly or behind the scenes.”

Akhilesh Yadav. Photo: X/@yadavakhilesh

Akhilesh Yadav on May 8, while campaigning in the reserved seat of Shahjahanpur, said that it was the SP that was in a direct fight with the BJP. He appealed to the “people of the Bahujan Samaj” to help the SP if they wanted to save Ambedkar’s constitution and reservations.

Through a post on X, Akhilesh also responded to the demotion of Akash Anand. Though he called the organisational change an internal matter of the BSP, Akhilesh said that the real reason behind it was that the BSP could not seen itself winning even a single seat “because most of the traditional supporters of BSP are also voting for INDIA Alliance this time to save the constitution and reservation.”

“The BSP is seeing this as a failure of its organisation. That is why its top leadership is making such a big change in the organisation but now the game has gone out of BSP’s hands. The truth is that when BSP has not won even a single seat in the last three phases despite being in its area of influence, then there is no possibility left in the remaining four phases,” said Akhilesh.

Mayawati reacted to Akhilesh’s biting criticism by asking him to focus on his own party and family.

“It would be better if the extremely anti-Dalit SP does not comment or worry about what is going on in the BSP organization. Instead, the SP leadership should only worry about the condition of their own family and the candidates of the Yadav community who have been fielded in the elections because the condition of all of them is very bad,” said Mayawati on X.

Mayawati is scheduled to address a rally in Kannauj on May 9. Akhilesh Yadav is contesting from Kannauj this time. It was at a rally in Kannauj in 2019, when the SP and BSP were contesting together, that Mayawati put her hand on the head of Akhilesh Yadav’s wife Dimple Yadav to bless her. Dimple eventually lost her election in one of the major upsets of 2019.

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