Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati has made significant announcements regarding the roles of her family members within the party. She confirmed that her nephew Akash Anand and his sister Deepika Anand will not hold any responsibilities in the party. In contrast, her younger nephew Ishan Anand is set to take on a more prominent role, where he will be assigned a ‘respectable responsibility’ within the organization. This move marks a shift in the party’s leadership dynamics as it prepares for future political engagements.
She also announced that the BSP’s important All-India meeting would be held on September 23, saying the meeting would enable party workers to once again devote themselves wholeheartedly to party work.
In a detailed post on X, Mayawati said she had taken the decision after “deeply reflecting on every aspect with great seriousness”. She said the decision was inspired by the example set by BSP founder Kanshi Ram and a letter written by Dr BR Ambedkar to his son.
Referring to Kanshi Ram, Mayawati said the BSP founder kept his close relatives away from political benefits after entering politics and allowed them to work in the party organisation only with “selfless dedication”. She said Kanshi Ram devoted his entire life to the welfare and upliftment of the Bahujan Samaj without starting his own family. She had brought Anand Kumar’s eldest son Akash Anand into politics at the insistence of family members, however, Akash’s conduct and activities after his marriage led to his separation from the party, according to the BSP supremo. Mayawati alleged that Akash had become “completely entangled in the web” of his father-in-law Ashok Siddharth. Bringing him back, she said, would be “a grave betrayal of the party” and an “anti-party wrongful act”. “No member from their family should be brought forward in the party who would follow in Akash’s footsteps,” she said. However, she warned that if he commits a “serious anti-party act”, he too would be removed from the party. In that eventuality, she said, no other member of Anand Kumar’s family would be given any responsibility and a dedicated Dalit worker already associated with the party would be brought forward.
