Suffering regular losses in elections and with her traditional vote bank leaving the party in the last few years, Mayawati has tried to attract youngsters as the party's potential vote bank by announcing her nephew Akash Anand as the successor of the Bahujan Samaj Party.
Mayawati, the Bahujan Samaj Party supremo and former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, has entrusted Akash with the responsibility of strengthening the party ahead of the coming parliamentary elections in 2024.
The announcement was made in a meeting convened by Mayawati here on Sunday to look into the party’s preparations for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
Mayawati’s move will now put pressure on Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee to announce her successor. Abhishek Banerjee, the de facto number two in the TMC, is viewed as the heir apparent of his aunt and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. He was also head of the All India Trinamool Congress Youth Wing. Abhishek, who is a Member of Parliament from Diamond Harbour, is facing an Enforcement Directorate inquiry which is seen as a hindrance but sources say that sooner or later, Mamata will also follow Mayawati to push forward the dynasty politics by announcing her nephew as her successor.
“BSP chief Mayawati has announced Akash Anand as her successor,” BSP leader Udayveer Singh, who was present in the meeting, confirmed to media persons. He added that Akash Anand would take stock of BSP’s presence and poll preparations where the party is weak.
"Behenji will continue to lead the party in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, and Anandji will lead the party in other states,” Singh said.
Akash Anand, an MBA graduate from London, was seen as someone who would succeed the BSP president as the party leader was said to be in-charge of party affairs since last year. He is the son of Mayawati’s younger brother, Anand Kumar, who is perceived as next to the behenji in the BSP. When Mayawati walked out of the alliance with Samajwadi Party after the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and there was a major reshuffle in the party organisation, she had announced Akash as national vice-president of the party. However, at the same time, Mayawati also countered charges of nepotism and told the media that Anand had decided not to hold the post.
“Recently, I appointed Akash as vice-president (of the party) but due to nepotism, he himself decided not to take the post. Unfortunately, after Akash was seen on my birthday, some channels dragged him and presented him as the future face of the party,” Mayawati had told the media.
Later, in June, Mayawati’s brother Anand Kumar was appointed vice-president of the BSP while nephew Akash Anand was made the national coordinator of the party.
Akash Anand was also listed as one of the star campaigners of BSP during the Lok Sabha elections in 2019, with his first poll campaign in Rajasthan. Akash Anand held major responsibilities for the four recently-held elections, particularly in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. The BSP won two seats in Rajasthan but drew a blank in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Telangana in the recent assembly polls.
The visibility of Anand in Mayawati’s party circle, coupled with his padayatra in Rajasthan’s Alwar in 2022, also gained spotlight in the strategy of the party ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, now barely five months away. The 28-year-old Anand participated in a 13-kilometre ‘Swabhiman Sankalp Yatra’ in Alwar on the birth anniversary of Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar. He was also visible in the BSP’s poll campaigning in Rajasthan in 2019, garnering support for the Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samajwadi Party-Rashtriya Lok Dal alliance. In 2019, Akash Anand addressed his first political rally, encouraging people to support the SP-BSP-RLD alliance, when the Election Commission of India imposed a 48-hour campaign ban on Mayawati.
Going by Akash Anand’s official X account, he describes himself as “a young supporter of Babasaheb’s vision”. Since August this year, Akash Anand’s presence at the state-level review meetings held in Lucknow was seen as another instance of his growing stature in the party ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the management of the BSP supremo’s election campaign strategy was handled by Akash Anand. He handled the social media campaign of the party in the 2022 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections.
Meanwhile, some top leaders of BSP claimed that Mayawati had chosen the right time to declare Akash as her successor. Chandrashekhar Ravan’s Azad Samaj Party has proved to be a laggard in the elections of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. The aura that Chandrashekhar had tried to create as a young Dalit leader in the Hindi belt parallel to BSP suddenly collapsed after the elections in these states. Sensing the urgency of the occasion, Mayawati played her trump card in the form of her nephew Akash Anand.
BSP leaders BR Dhoni and Surendra Singh, while welcoming the announcement, said that Mayawati also discussed electronic voting machines (EVMs) and she was in favour of elections through ballot papers.
“The BSP supremo raised questions on the reliability of electronic voting machines and said that BSP is in favour of elections through ballot paper,” they revealed.
Mayawati has handed over the responsibility of deciding candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections to the state-wise leaders. In an official statement on Saturday, the BSP had said that it would analyse its performance in the recently concluded assembly elections in three states, including Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.
