Akash Anand: The Chosen One

WHEN A YOUNG MAN wearing a white shirt, blue jeans, and sneakers stepped in for Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati at a rally in Agra four years ago, it came as no surprise. By then, Akash Anand was a familiar face seen at public meetings of his “buaji (father’s sister)”, as he refers to Mayawati.

Flanked on the dais by Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav and Rashtriya Lok Dal’s Ajit Singh at a joint rally when the three parties had entered into a pre-poll alliance, Anand was representing Mayawati when the Election Commission had barred her from campaigning for 48 hours, before the second round of voting for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, over a speech in Deoband.

It was two years before this, a few months after the drubbing BSP faced in the 2017 Uttar Pradesh polls, that Mayawati had first introduced Akash Anand, her younger brother Anand Kumar’s son, to party leaders as an MBA graduate from London, triggering murmurs about his political role. That year’s defeat in UP had pushed her to do the unimaginable in 2019— allying with her sworn enemy, SP, ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. BJP again swept UP winning 62 of the 80 seats, leaving Mayawati staring at her fourth electoral debacle since 2012. After splitting with SP, she again went into conflict with herself, breaching a norm set by her and her mentor Kanshi Ram, when she announced her brother Anand Kumar to be the party’s national vice-president, and nephew Akash Anand the national coordinator. Kanshi Ram had groomed Mayawati, a schoolteacher, to be his successor, keeping his family away from politics. In her autobiography Mere Sangharshmay Jeewan Ka Safarnama (The Story of My Life and Struggles), released in 2008, Mayawati wrote, “Whenever I will declare my successor, he will not be from among my siblings or relatives.” Around 15 years later, as she chaired a meeting of party workers at the Lucknow BSP office on December 10, an announcement came that she had declared Akash Anand, 28, as her “uttaradhikari (heir)”. He has been given charge of strengthening the party organisation across the country, except UP, Udayveer Singh, BSP’s Shahjahanpur district unit chief, was quoted as saying.

Mayawati, 67, stumped by a series of defeats, 2022 being the worst with BSP left with one seat in the 403-member UP Assembly, and allegations of financial irregularities, has passed on the baton to someone she trusts, three years before the next UP elections and months before the Lok Sabha polls. In a way, Anand’s political journey in the party began when BSP’s downfall had started. The challenge ahead is only bigger. The party hopes Anand will be able to galvanise its crestfallen party cadre amid waning hopes of the party’s revival. Energetic and innovative in his style of campaigning, he has been trying to reach out to the youth, connecting through campaigns across states and social media, as BSP faces a challenge from parties like Bhim Army co-founder Chandrashekhar Azad’s Aazad Samaj Party, also vying for Dalit votes. On the flip side, Anand is seen merely as a product of dynastic politics.

According to an analyst who specialises in Dalit politics, Mayawati still holds the larger chunk of her Jatav support base though the numbers may have fallen. He however adds that the phase of Dalit politics, once formidable, is over. In 2022, the BSP’s vote share in UP declined to approximtely 12 per cent. In the just-concluded Rajasthan polls, the only state where it won seats, two against six five years ago, BSP’s vote share dropped to 1.82 per cent from 4.03 per cent last time. The party polled 2.09 per cent votes in Chhattisgarh, against 3.87 per cent last time, and 3.32 per cent in Madhya Pradesh, where it had 5.01 per cent and two seats.

In anointing Anand is a frantic attempt to resurrect the party, by reining in its supporters and keeping pace with the times. Unlike during his speech in Agra, when BSP had SP and RLD as allies, Anand will have no one to blame, with his party deciding to go it alone, neither aligning with the BJP-led NDA nor the opposition I.N.D.I.A. bloc. In a post on X, after being named heir, Anand said, “Bahujan Samaj Party is a mission, and we have to take it to every corner of the country.” The mission before him is undoubtedly daunting.

Akash AnandBSPcaste politicsIndian politicsMayawatiUttar Pradesh