A thorn in Behenji's side: Nephew's removal signals BSP's identity crisis

Weight of leadership? With Mayawati's throne in peril, a churn in Dalit politics in UP, and allegations the BSP had become 'BJP's B-team', could eventually turn the tide

Ever since Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) National President Mayawati sacked her nephew, Akash Anand, on May 7 as her heir apparent, the party’s workers canvassing for its candidates in Kanpur, Kannauj, Unnao, and elsewhere across Uttar Pradesh (UP) have struggled to explain to its supporters Behenji’s sudden decision.

Legatees and practitioners of the Ambedkarite movement, such as Ashok Bharti, who has over the past 12 months appealed to the country’s Scheduled Castes (SCs) to turn the 2024 Lok Sabha (LS) polls into a referendum on protecting the Constitution, believes the young Anand, with his aggressive political speeches, especially combative against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was making a genuine attempt to stall the BSP’s seemingly inexorable decline in UP.

 

“The 2024 LS polls are being fought on the issue of social justice and preserving the Constitution. Behenji’s move (of sacking Anand) tells us that she no longer has her finger on the pulse of Dalits. The community always votes for change, not the status quo. It does not, and will not, sit at home. It will queue up on May 13 and subsequent phases to vote for a leader or a party who will speak of protecting Babasaheb’s Constitution,” Bharti, chairperson of the National Confederation of Dalit Organisations, told Business Standard.

In Kanpur on Thursday, Ravi Kureel, a young BSP political worker canvassing support for the party’s candidate from the seat, Kuldeep Bhaduria, conceded that jibes about the BSP leadership “surrendering” to the BJP have increased since May 7.

In nearby Kannauj, Samar Singh Yadav, a Samajwadi Party (SP) worker, proudly introduced Dalit youth campaigning for his party chief, Akhilesh Yadav, who is contesting the election from the seat.

Imran Bin Zafar, the BSP candidate from the seat that the BJP’s Subrat Pathak is defending, has bowed out of the fight even before polling as neither minorities nor Jatavs are supporting him, Samar claimed. The youth nodded in agreement. Akhilesh has also lately urged the “Bahujan samaj to not waste their vote on the BSP since it will help the BJP”.

Journalist Ajoy Bose, author of Behenji, a biography of Mayawati, attributes the BSP chief’s decisions to two factors. “She didn't like her political heir, using the language he did to attack the BJP, and secondly, he became too independent too soon for her liking. She wanted to keep him on a short leash,” Bose told Business Standard. He said Anand’s sacking would add grist to the Opposition’s allegations that the BSP had become the BJP’s B-team.

According to sources, Anand moved too swiftly in blooding his team into managing critical functions of the party, making established leaders insecure. Neither is Mayawati, who is not yet 70 and conscious of how Mulayam Singh Yadav and Kanshi Ram became irrelevant in their respective parties in their fading years, willing to hand over the entire party to Anand, who will remain in the wings.

The BSP’s decline since it lost power in UP in 2012 is rapid. Even in its worst times, the BSP commanded a 20 per cent vote share in UP, a state with a 21 per cent Dalit population, with Jatavs, the caste that Mayawati hails from, comprising 54 per cent of its SC population, and 12 per cent of the total population.

But the 2022 Assembly polls were a disaster. The BSP recorded its worst performance in UP since 1989. Thirty-three years back, the BSP won 13 seats with a 9.41 per cent vote share. In March 2022, it won only one seat with a vote share of 12.88 per cent, which dropped by almost 10 per cent since the 2017 Assembly polls.

When Mayawati announced Anand as her heir apparent on December 10, some observers, such as Bharti, had felt that the responsibility of turning around the BSP, one of the most successful political startups in Indian politics, was too onerous a burden on the 28-year-old’s shoulders.

But then the BSP needed Anand to counter the young upcoming Azad Samaj Party leader Chandrashekhar Azad, whose following among SCs has increased in recent years. He contested UP’s Nagina seat, which polled in the first phase on April 19 and where Anand campaigned aggressively.

“The Dalit vote is shifting from the BSP in UP. The Congress couldn’t benefit in 2022 because the Dalits thought realpolitik considerations shaped the tenor of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s political pitch. I believe the contours of Rahul Gandhi’s discourse have resonated more with Dalits since moored on ideological lines,” Bharti says.

According to a post-poll survey by academician Sudha Pai and Sajjan Kumar of the 2022 Assembly polls, 87 per cent of the Jatavs voted for the BSP in 2017, but only 65 per cent did five years later. The BJP’s Jatav vote share increased from 8 per cent in 2017 to 21 per cent in 2022, and SP’s from 3 per cent to 9 per cent. The BSP’s support among other Dalit castes dropped from 44 per cent to 27 per cent, and among non-dominant Other Backward Classes, it dropped from 11 per cent to 4 per cent.

Attracted by the idea of inclusion within the larger Hindu identity and as beneficiaries, ‘labharthi’ of the Centre and state government’s schemes, several Dalit castes shifted to the ‘Manuwadi’ BJP, and others to the SP, they concluded.

However, Bose and Bharti agree that the churn in Dalit politics in UP could eventually help the Congress.

“The Congress could take off in UP. But many in that party have long argued that Babu Jagjivan Ram and B R Ambedkar held two distinct, even competing, political lines and were rivals, which they were not,” Bharti says.