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Express News Service
LUCKNOW: Having been reduced to just one seat in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which has helmed the state four times, has brought about a number of sweeping organizational changes while introspecting and evaluating the reasons for its decimation in the Hindi heartland which has been the nursery of the Bahujan movement.
In a major change, BSP chief Mayawati seems to have distanced the party from its tried and tested social engineering and upper caste outreach, reposing faith in her kin and caste. The BSP chief has handed over important roles to both her younger brother Anand Kumar and nephew Akash Anand.
While Akash has been appointed as sole national coordinator of the party, his father Anand Kumar is number 2 as vice-president after supremo Mayawati in the party. However, political pundits are attributing the drubbing of the BSP in the recently concluded Assembly elections in UP to the inertness of the party leadership, its lackluster campaign and also the exodus of senior and prominent faces like Lalji Verma, Ram Achal Rajbhar, Indrajit Saroj, Swami Prasad Maurya and Naseemuddin Siddiqui over the years to other parties.
The fact that the BSP was reduced to just one MLA from 19 in the UP assembly by the end of its tenure reflects the depletion of its stature in the state polity. The majority of its MLAs had started looking for greener pastures right from the beginning of the last assembly tenure.
Moreover, the emergence of Bhim Army chief Chandra Shekhar Azad ‘Ravan’ has also pushed the BSP leadership on a shaky wicket. Azad has floated his political outfit Azad Samaj Party projecting it as an alternative to the BSP. He was in focus in the recently concluded election as he contested from Gorakhpur Urban to challenge the might of Yogi Adityanath.
In order to neutralize forces like the Bhim Army, Mayawati has entrusted her nephew Akash Anand, in his early thirties, to bring youth, especially from the SC community, to the party fold. Akash heads a team of around 150 youngsters, who also manage the party’s digital and social media outreach. It may be recalled that Akash, a London returned MBA degree holder, was introduced by Mayawati to the political landscape of UP in 2017 as her heir apparent. During the 2019 general elections, Akash used to accompany Mayawati to all her poll rallies.
Akash’s father and Mayawati’s younger brother Anand was also brought in around the same time. Prior to it, he was serving as a clerk in Noida but later switched over to the real estate business and came under the Income Tax department’s scanner for accumulating wealth more than his known sources of income during 2007-2012 when Mayawati was UP CM. Anand now manages the party finances while coordinating with zonal committees.
Moreover, the BSP seems to have shunned its upper caste outreach policy realizing well that while on one hand it could not reap its dividends as the Brhamins consolidated firmly in favour of the BJP in the assembly polls, on the other, its pro-Brahmin policy cost it a chunk of Dalit votes as well. It may be recalled that BSP was the first party to commence Prabudhh Sammelans to woo Brahmins across 75 UP districts last year. The extensive campaign from July to October was led by BSP general secretary and RS MP SC Mishra across the state.
After the Assembly polls, the first prominent change made by the BSP leadership was to replace its Brahmin face and Ambedkarnagar MP Ritesh Pandey as leader of the party in the Lok Sabha with Girish Chand Jatav, party MP from Nagina. Moreover, Sangeeta Azad, party MP from a reserved seat in Azamgarh, has been appointed the party’s chief whip in the Lok Sabha in place of Girish Chand Jatav. Currently, the BSP has 10 MPs in the lower house of Parliament.
At the same time, as per a senior BSP leader, the party is mulling a review of its Muslim outreach policy making it more convincing and robust. Despite giving tickets to 87 Muslim candidates, much more than the SP which had fielded only 59 Muslim candidates, the BSP could not get adequate Muslim support while the SP, which remained mute on the issues of minorities to avert polarization, witnessed a consolidation of Muslims in its favour.
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