By sacking 'heir apparent' Akash, Mayawati may have dealt a suicidal blow to BSP

Strong orator

The 30-year-old Akash, an MBA degree holder from the UK’s University of Plymouth, had proved himself to be a combative orator who could, despite the charge of being a dynast with no grounding in politics, fill the palpable leadership void that the BSP was facing due to Mayawati’s long absences from public life and her even more perplexing silences against the BJP’s alleged anti-Dalit policies and politics.

If it was Akash’s aggressive oratory that had ostensibly led Mayawati to sack him as national coordinator in May 2023 – soon after his scathing “party of terrorists” jibe at the BJP at a poll rally in Uttar Pradesh’s Sitapur – it was the need for an aggressive face that had forced the BSP supremo to reinstate him a month later.

Also read: BSP chief Mayawati removes nephew Akash Anand from all party positions

Why Akash fit the bill

The BSP had drawn a blank in the Lok Sabha polls and many commentators believed the Dalits, even from Mayawati’s own community of Jatavs, had not taken kindly to her decision to punish Akash for “attacking the BJP”, which was facing Dalit-fury owing to the Samajwadi Party and Congress’s formidable ‘Save Constitution’ poll pitch. The impressive victory of fellow Jatav Dalit leader and Azad Samaj Party chief Chandrashekhar Azad, eight year’s Akash’s senior, in Uttar Pradesh’s Nagina Lok Sabha seat was seen as a fresh challenge for the BSP’s quest of keeping itself relevant among the state’s over 20 per cent Dalit voters.

Akash’s return as BSP’s national coordinator was meant to revive the BSP as a party that spoke boldly for Dalit rights and aggressively countered the BJP’s Hindutva while also providing Dalit voters a young, educated and belligerent leader who could be a more pedigreed alternative to Chandrashekhar Azad, whose political and ideological commitments were still a subject of frenzied speculation.

Missing barbs, bellicose jibes

However, in the months since his return as BSP’s national coordinator, while Akash did lead his party’s poll campaigns in Haryana, Maharashtra and Delhi – drawing a blank everywhere – it was also clear that he was no longer the same feisty leader with bellicose jibes for the BJP who had caught the attention of Dalits, and other communities, not long ago.

BSP sources say Akash was “forced to tone down” his anti-BJP rhetoric by Mayawati, whose politics for the past several years has “lost its sting” due to “immense pressure from the Centre (an oft-repeated reference alluding to Mayawati’s fear of being booked for various charges by central probe agencies)”. “Whether it was the Assembly election in Haryana or in Maharashtra or Delhi, you cannot recall a single powerful speech Akash made against the BJP which is a complete contrast to his speeches during the Lok Sabha elections; he was obviously either under pressure from Behenji (Mayawati) to not attack the BJP or was scared that doing so will lead to him being sacked again,” a former BSP MP told The Federal.

Also read: Mayawati reinstates nephew Akash Anand as successor, BSP coordinator

What Mayawati accuses Akash of?

It was, thus, all the more bizarre to see the reasons Mayawati cited Sunday while sacking her nephew. In May, when she had benched Akash, Mayawati had merely said that her nephew would resume party roles once he gained “political maturity”. This was a palatable excuse given Akash’s limited exposure to the rough and tumble of Indian politics, which he had begun to get involved in only five years earlier while handling the BSP’s social media campaigns.

On Sunday though, Mayawati was scathing and personal in her criticism. She asserted that Akash was working under the conniving influence of his father-in-law, former MP Ashok Siddharth, who she in turn, accused of trying to split the party into two factions. Mayawati had sacked Siddharth from the party just weeks earlier. On Sunday, she claimed there was no way of knowing what pressures Siddharth could still exert on Akash “through his daughter (Akash’s wife)” which made sacking Akash important.

The convergence of Mayawati’s personal and political lives in the running, and possible ruining, of the BSP hasn’t ended with Akash’s sacking. While the BSP supremo has now decided not to name her successor till her “last breath”, she has named two national coordinators in Akash’s place – her younger brother and Akash’s father, Anand Kumar, and party veteran Ramji Gautam.

Who steps into limelight now?

The responsibilities of Kumar and Gautam have also been clearly demarcated. Kumar, who is also the BSP vice president, has been assigned the seemingly clerical job of staying put in Delhi to manage “all paperwork and important matters of the party while keeping in touch with party members from across the country”. Curiously, Mayawati has said no other member of Kumar’s family will now marry into a political family to ensure the BSP “doesn’t face any problems in future as it did because of Ashok Siddharth”.

Also read: Why Mayawati may have stripped nephew Akash Anand of top party post

Gautam, on the other hand, will “tour all states to take stock of the party’s activities, strengthen the party across the country as per my (Mayawati’s) directions and spend more time in any state bound for elections”.

‘Suicidal blow’

Political observers who have tracked or been directly or indirectly associated with the BSP believe Mayawati’s latest decision has “not just ruined Akash’s career within the BSP but hastened the party’s ruin”. Lucknow-based Dalit activist and political commentator Professor Ravikant, who has long sympathised with the “movement built by (BSP founder) Kanshi Ram”, told The Federal, “Behenji has dealt a suicidal blow to the movement started by Kanshi Ram.”

Akash’s sacking, Ravikant said, comes at a time when Dalits, particularly in Uttar Pradesh, are “desperately looking for an aggressive young leadership”. “The BSP has lost much of its political relevance because the Dalits no longer see Mayawati fighting for them. During the Lok Sabha polls, Akash came as a new hope for Dalits, but the action Mayawati took against him for criticising the BJP made her even more unpopular. When she brought him back, many of her supporters thought she has realised her mistake. By sacking him again now, she has effectively ended his career in the BSP and hurt herself as well as the BSP. Now, even if she brings him back in some role, people will not take him seriously; the question of how long he’ll stay in that position will keep lingering,” Ravikant said.

‘Hitting the streets the only way to save BSP’

Suman Gupta, the editor of Faizabad’s 65-year old Hindi daily, Jan Morcha, agrees with Ravikant’s assessment and adds, “the only way BSP can revive now is if Mayawati decides to hit the streets and raise the issues of Dalits as she used to in the 1980s and 1990s but the very fact that she has tasked Ramji Gautam to handle the party’s political activities across the country and picked Anand Kumar to handle affairs of the office is a sign that she will continue to work from home. This is a recipe for disaster given that the BSP today is left with just one MLA in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly and no member in Parliament while its vote share, long believed to be a captive vote bank, is steadily sliding.”

Also read: Akash Anand: Can Mayawati’s chosen political heir resuscitate BSP?

Another former BSP MP who was once among Mayawati’s confidantes told The Federal, “over the years, Behenji has either chased out all good leaders from the party or made the few who remain in the BSP totally irrelevant; Akash was the only person to come up in the party since 2019 who showed some promise, but now she has ended his career too... I don’t know whether after such humiliation, Akash will continue in the party or explore other political options, but I think, in the interest of Uttar Pradesh’s Dalits, he should either float something of his own or find a platform that will utilise his skills”.