BSP chief Mayawati declares nephew Akash Anand as successor, says party leader

Mr. Anand, 28, national coordinator of the party, was at the BSP chief’s side during the 2019 Lok Sabha and 2022 Vidhan Sabha polls.

Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati arrived for a meeting of party’s office bearers ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, at the party office in Lucknow, on December 10, 2023. | Photo Credit: PTI

Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) president Mayawati named her nephew Akash Anand as her political successor on Sunday in Lucknow, according to a senior office bearer of the BSP. The occasion was an all India party meeting

“Akash Anand has been declared the uttaradhikari (heir) by Behanji (Mayawati). She asked us to work hard for the 2024 parliamentary polls,” Udayveer Singh, BSP district head from Shahjahanpur told reporters in Lucknow. The BSP’s official statement issued after the meeting did not mention any such decision or anything about leadership succession. Mr. Singh, added that Mr. Anand, has been given the responsibility of strengthening the organisation in different states, where the party is weak, apart from Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

Growing stature

Akash Anand, 28, national coordinator of the party, was at the BSP chief’s side during the 2019 Lok Sabha and 2022 Vidhan Sabha polls. Mr. Anand’s stature is growing within the party, evident from his active campaigning during the recent assembly polls when he also led a 13-kilometre ‘Swabhiman Sankalp Yatra’ in Rajasthan’s Alwar on Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s anniversary. The BSP won two seats in Rajasthan but failed to win any seat in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Telangana.

The BSP chief asked party leaders and workers to strive hard with the 2024 polls in mind and remain alert for foul play by opposition parties who are leaving no stone unturned to damage the BSP. “Party leaders and workers must work with devotion and dedication to help the BSP get a favourable verdict in the upcoming parliamentary polls. At the same time it is also necessary to remain alert for foul play by parties that are out to thwart the BSP, which is a movement of marginalised sections,” said the former four time U.P. CM.

The BSP, a Dalit centric party used to be a major political force in U.P. in the 1990s and 2000s, but has witnessed a gradual decline in the last decade. The party polled only 12.8 percent votes, its lowest in almost three decades in the 2022 assembly elections. The State is now dominated by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP).