New Delhi: BSP supremo Mayawati announced her political heir after a key meeting of the party’s office-bearers on Sunday morning. Her nephew Akash Anand will take over the reins of the party after her. But for now, the former UP chief minister will continue as BSP chief.
Akash Anand, a prominent face during Mayawati’s Lok Sabha election campaign in 2019, is the national coordinator of the party. The veteran leader made the announcement at a key party meeting on Sunday which was attended by top party office-bearers.
Mayawati, always a great critic of dynastic politics, had appointed her brother Anand Kumar as national vice-president of the party in 2019 and her nephew Akash was named national coordinator. This development comes a day after Lok Sabha MP Danish Ali, who recently became a target of an unsavoury exchange on the floor of the House, was suspended from the BSP. A party leader who was present at the meeting on Sunday, Udayveer Singh, chief of the party’s Shahjahanpur unit, said: “Our leader (Mayawati) has said Akash Anand ji will be her successor in the future. She has also given him the responsibility to strengthen the party in states where the party is weak. She also said she will continue to lead the party in UP and Uttarakhand, and Anand ji will lead the party in other states.”
In a departure from the party’s usual strategy of not holding padayatras and demonstrations, in August he led a 14-day padayatra in Rajasthan where he has been in charge of the party’s affairs since last year. The party failed to match its 2018 performance of winning six seats, bagging only the constituencies of Sadulpur and Bari. Akash played a role in the campaigns in MP, Chhattisgarh, and Telangana as well. In June, the BSP chief deployed him and Rajya Sabha MP Ramji Gautam, the central coordinator for these states, to prepare and launch the election campaign on issues concerning Dalits, religious minorities, OBCs and tribals. He also campaigned in the recent elections in Madhya Pradesh.
