BSP supremo Mayawati names nephew Akash Anand as political heir, keeps UP & Uttarakhand for herself

Akash, 33, is currently the BSP’s national coordinator.

“He will continue to work as national coordinator in states where the party is weak. She also said that she will continue to lead the party in UP and Uttarakhand, and Akashji will lead the party in other states,” Singh later told The Indian Express.

Although the BSP did not officially confirm or deny it, several other party leaders confirmed Mayawati’s announcement at Sunday’s meeting.

BSP’s UP unit president Vishwanath Pal said, “The entire Bahujan Samaj has congratulated the party for the decision to make Akash Anand the successor of honourable Mayawati ji.”

BSP MLC Bhimrao Ambedkar, who was also present at the meeting, said, “Honourable Mayawati ji has declared honourable Akash Anand ji to be her successor. She has said that after her, he will be the only successor for the BSP.”

Akash, son of Mayawati’s younger brother Anand Kumar, oversaw the party’s preparations for the recent polls in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana and Chhattisgarh.

In a departure from the party’s usual strategy of not organising padayatras and demonstrations, he led a 14-day padayatra in August in Rajasthan where he was made in charge of party affairs last year. The party, however, failed to match its 2018 performance of winning six seats, bagging only two constituencies – Sadulpur and Bari.

Akash also played a prominent role in the poll campaigns in MP, Chhattisgarh, and Telangana. In June, Mayawati deployed him and Rajya Sabha MP Ramji Gautam as central coordinators for these states, to prepare and launch the poll campaign on issues relating to Dalits, religious minorities, OBCs and tribals. But the party failed to open accounts in these three states.

Although he was being projected as Mayawati’s political heir for several years, Akash was introduced to BSP workers in September 2017, following his return to India after completing his MBA in London. He had finished his schooling in Delhi.

His introduction to the party workers – seen as the launch of his political career – came a few months after the BJP returned to power in the state with a massive victory in an election in which the BSP finished third with 19 seats.

Akash became more active politically in the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha election and was credited with bringing his aunt over to Twitter (now known as X). In the run-up to the polls, a day after the Election Commission banned Mayawati from campaigning for 48 hours, Akash took to the stage and addressed his first rally – in Agra – urging the people to vote for the SP-BSP-RLD alliance. SP chief Akhilesh Yadav and then RLD president Ajit Singh had joined him on stage.

A few weeks after the alliance’s defeat, Mayawati appointed Akash as the party’s national coordinator and tasked him with reaching out to the youth, especially those from the Dalit community. Since then he grew in stature over the years and is now considered to be Mayawati’s most trusted in the family.

A BSP statement released after the meeting on Sunday, however, made no mention of Akash. It quoted Mayawati, saying that she instructed party workers and leaders to face the rival parties’ “deception” and “foul play” for electoral gains with “double hard work”.

“The opposing parties are spending crores of rupees collected through donations and are trying to impact the elections. Meanwhile, the BSP depends on the hard-earned money of its people and stays away from big industrialists and capitalists in order to not have to follow their directions,” said the statement, quoting Mayawati.

She also said that “opposing parties defy the model code of conduct for elections by making promises that cannot be fulfilled”.

“This affects the elections and instead of being a multi-cornered fight, it becomes one-sided. Then how are unbiased and fair elections possible?” she said.