BSP chief Mayawati chooses successor before success

In a piquant move, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati has anointed her London-educated nephew Akash Anand as her successor. The decision was announced on December 10 (Sunday) in Lucknow on her behalf by a BSP functionary Udayveer Singh at the end of a meeting of party leaders drawn from all over the country.

The meeting was called in view of next year’s Lok Sabha elections. Mayawati shared her thoughts about recent political developments while stressing the need to chart out the party’s robustly independent plan for the upcoming battle. She ruled out the likelihood of BSP’s alliance or participation in any of the political groupings being currently forged. She criticised both rightwing and centrist formations that are now being given shape with an eye on the elections for the next parliament.

This was also made clear in a BSP statement issued after the meeting. It quoted Mayawati as saying: “BSP is mostly at a disadvantage whenever it enters into an alliance as its votes get transferred to its alliance partner while the partners are not able to shift their votes to BSP candidates. It is so because most other parties are not as staunchly committed to public good as the BSP is because of its adherence to Dr BR Ambedkar’s ideology based on true egalitarianism. It leads to more negativity than positivity whenever political and electoral alliances are made. This is what most people (in BSP) believe about forming alliance; the Uttar Pradesh alliances made in the past have only (left) bitter taste for the BSP.”

BSP performance

But this argument does not hold if one is to look at the outcome of the last Lok Sabha elections held in 2019. The BSP had contested in alliance with the Samajwadi Party (SP). The BSP won 10 seats while SP romped home only in five of the total 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh against the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) 62. This is in sharp contrast to the previous Lok Sabha contest of 2014, when the BSP drew a blank, the SP remained at five and the BJP won a whopping 71 seats, leaving a single seat for the Congress. The remaining two seats out of 80 were bagged by Apna Dal, a BJP ally. The SP and BSP were not in alliance in 2014 polls.

Moreover, way back in 1993, an SP-BSP alliance had seized power in Uttar Pradesh and Mulayam Singh became the Chief Minister with BSP support. This happened within a year of the demolition of Babri Masjid and, thus, at that point, it signified a virtual repudiation of BJP’s Mandir card by the electorate. But in 1995, the BSP withdrew support from Mulayam Singh’s government and Mayawati became Chief Minister with BJP support. Her government lasted only for a few months as the BJP brought down the government led by her.

Last year, the BSP ended up with just one seat in the Assembly even as it bagged nearly 13 per cent of the votes in Assembly elections. In contrast, the SP led by Mulayam’s son Akhilesh Yadav improved its vote percentage by getting over 32 per cent votes as compared to 28.32 per cent in 2017. On the other hand, BJP’s vote share in UP went down a bit in 2022. It stood at 41.3 per cent in 2022 against 41.57 per cent in 2017.

Vote transfer

So, the BSP is now at its lowest ebb in UP while both the BJP and SP are far ahead. The BSP has an edge only over the Congress in terms of vote percentage. The Congress got only 2 per cent votes in the last Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh and ended up with two seats in the Assembly. Thus, looking for an alliance is logically the best possible way for the revival of the BSP in Uttar Pradesh. As for vote transfer, Mayawati had attributed the poor performance by her party in the last Assembly battle to the polarisation of votes between BJP and SP where Muslims voted overwhelmingly, according to her, in favour of the SP, forcing Dalit voters of the BSP to vote for the BJP and thwart the SP’s chances to capture power in Uttar Pradesh.

Significantly, Mayawati suspended her party MP from Uttar Pradesh’s Amroha, Kunwar Danish Ali, on December 9 (Saturday) for alleged violation of party line and discipline. Among other things, this shows that BSP has started giving up hope on Muslim votes. The fact is in the absence of an alliance among non-BJP parties in Uttar Pradesh, about 22 per cent Dalit and nearly 20 per cent of Muslim votes worked at cross-purposes in the electorally crucial state. This has been acknowledged by Mayawati among others.

Sunday’s announcement by BSP about the appointment of Mayawati’s nephew as flag bearer of her legacy and heir was expected. The 28-year-old Akash Anand has been seen with her now for years in her public meetings and other appearances. He has finally been assigned to look after the party’s organisation and programmes in states other than Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. This indicates that Mayawati will focus mainly on Uttar Pradesh in the coming elections while the nephew, who has been the BSP’s national coordinator since 2019, will try to ensure the party’s presence in other states. And, thus, it is bound to bring many more BSP candidates in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

Advantage BJP

The party that clearly stands to benefit from this is the BJP. It can easily tackle more BSP candidates who would mostly make a dent in its rivals’ rather than its votes. Moreover, the ascent of Akash in BSP can bring credence to BJP’s dynasty charge which it loves to harp on against its opponents. In BSP’s case this can be more so, if needed, since the BSP founder the late Kanshi Ram had renounced all his ties with his family in Punjab and designated Mayawati as his successor. His brother Harbans Singh and sister Swarn Kaur had moved the Delhi High Court to claim the late leader’s body and legacy at the time of his death 2006 but did not succeed. The two were only allowed to attend the funeral under police protection ordered by the court because of the fear of their being harmed by Mayawati’s supporters.

If viewed in this backdrop, the latest step taken by the BSP chief appears to be a bit jarring vis-à-vis the example set by Kanshi Ram. Unlike Mayawati, he chose his successor only when the party began to taste success and was assured of it in future too. He would have never thought of its success being frittered away so casually.