Mayawati appoints Randhir Beniwal as BSP National Coordinator instead of brother Anand Kumar

Just two days after Anand Kumar was appointed national coordinator, Mayawati announced that he would not take up the post but continue to remain the party’s vice president. Kumar is Mayawati’s brother and the father of Akash Anand, whom Mayawati had anointed as her successor but recently expelled from the party.

Taking to X, Mayawati posted that Kumar had taken this decision in the best interests of the Bahujan Samaj Party and the movement of which he had been a hard-working soldier.

In Kumar’s place, Randhir Beniwal will now be national coordinator along with Rajya Sabha MP Ramji Gautam. Saharanpur-based Beniwal has been with the party for a long time and is a grassroots worker. He might be a surprise pick because of his low profile but his organisational skills are appreciated within the party.

This churn in the BSP, which is directed solely at Mayawati’s family members, could be indicative of a larger disquiet within the party which most recently recorded a very dismal performance in the assembly elections in Delhi.

Meanwhile, Akash Anand, once considered to be the bright new hope of the party, has done himself no favours by making long social media posts about his removal from the party. He now describes himself as “a young supporter of Baba Saheb’s vision” and wrote that his aunt’s decision was an “emotional” one for him. Mayawati hit back by saying that his explanation did not display any political maturity but the influence of his father-in-law, Ashok Siddharth, whom she has accused of trying to split the party.

Anand was denounced as a successor in April 2024 too when an FIR for hate speech was lodged against him in Sitapur. Mayawati had then too said that he lacked political maturity. But after the Lok Sabha polls, he was back by his aunt’s side.

Though Mayawati has said there will now be no successor during her lifetime, this back and forth in the party could spell real trouble. For now, she claims to trust her brother but could she also dismiss him for being under his son’s influence? And if her fears of a split in the party come to fruition, it will mark the biggest shift in Dalit politics in the last three decades.