Mayawati expels nephew Akash Anand from the BSP a second time

Bahujan Samaj Party president Mayawati has expelled her nephew Akash Anand from the party for a second time. The announcement, reported across Indian outlets on Thursday, cited divided loyalties. His father-in-law has left politics in the same burst of statements.

Anand had been presented for several years as the heir who would carry the BSP beyond Mayawati's generation. That experiment has now failed twice. The first expulsion was reversed. This one arrives with family members peeling off in public, which makes a quiet climb-down harder.

Why the heir existed

Kanshi Ram built the BSP as a vehicle for Dalit voters and a wider Bahujan coalition. Mayawati turned it into a governing party in Uttar Pradesh, the country's most populous state, and sat as chief minister four times. When she needed a successor who was family and still young enough to campaign, Anand was the name she put on posters.

The party that once bargained on equal terms with the BJP and the Samajwadi Party now wins a handful of seats. Its vote has leaked to the BJP's outreach among non-Jatav Dalits and to the SP's attempt to rebuild a Muslim-Yadav-Dalit mix. An heir was supposed to stop that leak by looking like the future. Instead the succession fight has become the story.

Mayawati's charge of divided loyalties is the language parties use when a designated successor starts to build his own room. The public record does not yet show a formal split with a named rival outfit. It shows a family organisation treating an internal rebellion as a disciplinary case.

What the second expulsion does

First, it ends the idea, for now, that the BSP has a planned handover. Cadres who stayed because they thought Anand would inherit the machine have to choose between the aunt and the nephew. Second, it hands opposing parties a clip they will use in Uttar Pradesh: a Dalit party that cannot settle its own house. Third, it puts Mayawati back at the centre of every decision, which is where she has always preferred to sit and which is also why the succession problem never closed.

Anand's father-in-law leaving politics in the same cycle suggests the dispute is not only about one man. Marriage alliances inside a family party are staffing decisions. When they snap, the staff go with them.

The electoral remainder

The BSP still has a core Jatav vote and a brand that older voters recognise. It does not have a deep bench of state leaders who can win seats without the family name. Expelling the only young relative who had been marketed as national talent leaves the party with Mayawati, her speeches, and a shrinking map of strongholds.

Uttar Pradesh will vote again in 2027. Any BSP revival would need either a reconciliation with Anand or a new face who is not a nephew. Neither is on the table this week. The fact on Thursday is simpler. The designated successor is out again, and this time a piece of his in-laws' political life went with him.