Decode Politics: Why Mayawati reinstated nephew Akash Anand as her sole heir

Weeks after the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) recorded its worst-ever Lok Sabha performance, party supremo Mayawati on Sunday reinstated her nephew Akash Anand as her sole political heir and the party’s national coordinator while urging leaders to “give him more respect than earlier”.

Mayawati appointed Akash as the party’s national coordinator in 2019 and in December last year named him her political successor only to sack him last month. While BSP leaders said they were sure Anand would be reinstated, they did not expect the decision to come so soon. Some in the party speculated that Mayawati’s quick U-turn was the result of the emergence of Nagina MP Chandrashekhar Aazad as a powerful alternative in the Bahujan movement.

With Akash back, what does it mean for the party, especially with bypolls around the corner and the Assembly elections in the state due in 2027?

On May 7, Mayawati sacked Akash saying her decision would be in force “in the larger interest of the party and the movement … until he attains maturity”. The move came after the police in Sitapur in UP booked Akash for allegedly promoting hatred and enmity after he referred to the BJP government as “aatankwadiyo ki sarkar (a government of terrorists)”.

Following his sacking, Akash stopped his campaign mid-way through the Lok Sabha elections leaving Mayawati as the lone face of the party. The party also received feedback from its candidates who lost the polls that Jatavs as well as a section of Muslims, seen to be the BSP’s core voter base, would not have backed the Samajwadi Party (SP)-Congress alliance had Akash continued his campaign.

In a departure from Mayawati’s style of campaigning, where she primarily trained guns on the SP and the Congress, Akash consistently