Mayawati restores Akash Anand and says Siddharth's retirement ends the separations

Mayawati on Tuesday said there would be no further need to separate her nephew Akash Anand from the Bahujan Samaj Party, because his father-in-law Ashok Siddharth had retired from active politics. The post on X came a day after she brought Anand back and named him national coordinator, reversing an expulsion dated 10 September.

She used the post to reject a count. Most outlets, she wrote, had exaggerated the matter and said Anand had been expelled four times. Her account is different. Before his marriage, she said, he had an active role and was never expelled. After his association with Siddharth, she said, Siddharth tried to tarnish Anand's image for his own interest. Anand was separated from the party more than once so that he would correct himself, and taken back after he did. She asked the press to report that sequence rather than a tally of expulsions.

Siddharth, a former Rajya Sabha member, had been expelled earlier over alleged anti-party activity. He then announced his retirement. Mayawati treated that retirement as the condition that removes the reason for keeping Anand out. The 10 September expulsion of Anand was followed by the appointment of his younger brother, Ishan Anand, as a national coordinator. Tuesday's arrangement restores Akash to the post and reverses that substitution.

The title she used on Monday was national coordinator. Some reports said national convener. The X post, as carried by PTI and the Hindustan Times, says coordinator. The job is the one Ishan held in the days after 10 September. It is also the job Akash held before the last separation. The organisational fact is the restoration, not the English rendering of the title.

Mayawati has said the BSP will contest the coming assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Uttarakhand on its own, without alliances. Anand's return sits inside that decision. A party that has ruled out partners is filling its own coordinator post with the nephew it has repeatedly sent out and recalled. The retirement of Siddharth is the reason she gave for stopping the cycle.

The dispute she is answering is about the record, not about the Monday appointment. The appointment is not in doubt: Anand is back, as coordinator, from 5 October. What she disputes is the word expelled, applied to the years before the marriage, and the number four. A reader cannot settle that dispute from the X post alone. The post is a primary account of how the party leadership wants the file read. It is not a list of dates.

The dates that are public are fewer. Siddharth's expulsion and later retirement. Anand's expulsion on 10 September. Ishan Anand's appointment as coordinator in the gap. Akash Anand's restoration on Monday. Mayawati's explanation on Tuesday, tying the end of separations to the father-in-law's withdrawal from politics.

For the 2027 Uttar Pradesh election that sequence is the relevant one. The BSP will go in without an ally, on Mayawati's own statement, and with Akash Anand again in the coordinator's chair. Whether that chair survives the campaign is the question her Tuesday post tried to close in advance.

The family file is part of the public argument, and it is worth keeping straight. Akash Anand is Mayawati's nephew. Ashok Siddharth is Anand's father-in-law and a former Rajya Sabha member of the same party. Ishan Anand is Akash's younger brother, placed in the coordinator's post for the days between 10 September and the Monday restoration. Three names, three roles, one chair.

Mayawati's word for Siddharth's exit, carried in Hindi reports of the post, was sanyas, a withdrawal rather than a fresh expulsion. She treated that withdrawal as the end of the influence she says forced the earlier separations. A reader who does not accept that causal claim can still use the organisational result. The coordinator's post changed hands twice in under a month, from Akash to Ishan and back.

The X post is the text. Reports that Anand was expelled four times are the text she answered. Both can sit in the file. Only one of them is a party decision with a date a returning officer can read: the restoration on 5 October, explained on 6 October, ahead of assembly polls the BSP says it will fight alone in three states.