Lucknow, September 10 (TNA) Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati on Thursday announced that her nephew Akash Anand has been “completely freed” from the party, divesting him of all responsibilities and primary membership, hours after his father-in-law, former Rajya Sabha MP Ashok Siddharth, declared his retirement from politics.
In a long post on X, Mayawati said that just as Anand was relieved of all important responsibilities of the post of national coordinator on September 3, “he should now also be completely freed from the party from today”. “Therefore, if Akash Anand wants to remain independent in the party, he is free to do so; that is, he has now been completely freed from the party,” she wrote.
Mayawati accused Anand of prioritising family interests over the party and functioning with a “double mind”. She said party members felt that someone who gives greater importance to family relationships than to the BSP and its mission cannot effectively work for the organisation. “For this reason, the party leadership deems it best that… he should now be completely freed from the party as well, effective immediately,” she said.
The BSP supremo also referred to Siddharth’s retirement, saying it had come “too late”. She claimed that if Siddharth had announced his sanyas from politics earlier, the party would not have faced so many difficulties. According to party sources, Mayawati has long been concerned about Siddharth’s alleged influence over Anand’s political decisions and feared that the broader Bahujan movement was being overshadowed by personal and family interests.
Some reports suggested that Mayawati was also unhappy that Anand did not repost or retweet her X post linking his possible return to the party with Siddharth’s exit from politics. While she used the phrase “fully relieved” rather than “expelled”, party insiders described the move as a full-scale expulsion from primary membership.
The decision comes ahead of the 2027 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections and deepens the internal power struggle within the BSP over leadership and succession. Anand, who was reinducted into the party last year and appointed national convener, now faces an uncertain political future, with attention turning to his response and the reaction within the party ranks.