Akash Anand’s déjà vu moment: Who is Mayawati’s nephew, sacked for the second time?

“You are aware that Siddharth’s daughter is married to him. We will have to watch how much influence Siddharth will exert on his daughter as well as Akash. In such a situation, Akash has been removed from all party responsibilities. Siddharth is completely responsible for this and has damaged the party while ruining Akash’s career,” Mayawati said in a statement after a meeting in Lucknow in which she announced her decision to replace Akash with his father Anand Kumar and Rajya Sabha MP Ramji Gautam. Mayawati said she would not announce a successor till she was alive. The BSP last month expelled Siddharth and another leader, Nitin Singh, for “anti-party activities”.

Akash was brought in to help stop the BSP’s electoral slide but the party failed to have much of an impact in elections in Delhi in February, Haryana last year, and Rajasthan in late 2023. While in Haryana the party did not win any of the 35 seats it contested and saw its vote share fall by 2 percentage points to 1.86%, none of its 68 candidates won in the capital even as the party’s vote share dipped to 0.57%, just over NOTA. In Rajasthan, the party won just two of the 184 seats it contested and saw its vote share drop two percentage points to 1.81%. In 2018, the party had won six seats but all the MLAs subsequently jumped ship to the Congress.

Ups and downs in BSP

The son of Mayawati’s younger brother Anand Kumar, Akash did his schooling in Delhi and his MBA from London. He returned to India in 2017 and in May the same year, accompanied Mayawati to Saharanpur, where a Thakur-Dalit clash had occurred.

In September 2017, a few months after the BJP came to power in UP in a massive victory, reducing the BSP to 19 seats, Mayawati formally introduced Akash to party workers.

By the time of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Akash was playing an active role in the party and was credited with getting Mayawati to join social media platform X.

When the Election Commission banned Mayawati from campaigning for 48 hours during the polls, Akash addressed his very first rally, urging people to vote for the BSP and its then partners Samajwadi Party (SP) and Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD). In a symbolism that was not lost, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav and then RLD president Ajit Singh joined Akash on the stage.

Akash was first appointed BSP national coordinator following the 2019 Lok Sabha polls in which the party won 10 seats in Uttar Pradesh, second only to the BJP, and was tasked with handling the party’s affairs in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. His primary role was bringing the youth, especially those from the Dalit community, into the BSP fold. The party had begun to feel that the Dalit youth were more captivated by young Dalit leaders such as Chandrashekhar Azad.

Akash’s role was expanded to overseeing the BSP’s preparations for the Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana and Chhattisgarh Assembly elections in 2023. He was told to help formulate a campaign around issues concerning Dalits, religious minorities, OBCs, and tribals.

In August, Akash led a foot march in Bhopal, and made a bid to gherao the Raj Bhavan. The same month, he also led a 14-day padyatra in Rajasthan. This was a departure from the party’s usual strategy of not organising padyatras and demonstrations. However, the party failed to make much headway electorally.

In December 2023, the BSP chief elevated Akash. However, months down the line, in one of his first poll rallies, Akash targeted the BJP at length, in a departure from the strategy of Mayawati who has focused her attacks on the Congress and SP in recent years. In a speech in Sitapur on April 29, 2024, Akash purportedly called the BJP “aatankvadiyon ki party (a party of terrorists)” and was booked “promoting enmity”. In party circles, this was believed to be the reason why Mayawati dropped him as national coordinator while the election campaign was on.

In an interview with The Indian Express given days before the Sitapur speech, Akash said his entry into politics was “not planned”, as Mayawati, whom he calls “Bua maa”, “did not want anyone from the family to join politics”. However, he said, the leaders she turned to “did not rise to the occasion”.

“Then, the members of her circle advised her that if she can bring in someone from the family as the custodian, that will give some sort of stability to the party,” he said. At the time, he defended the strategy of not aggressively taking on the BJP. Akash also admitted that he was often aggressive in his speeches, adding that he could not control his anger over “injustice” done to people, particularly Dalits.