Battle royal for the Dalit vote bank is in the offing in Uttar Pradesh as Azad Samaj Party (Kanshiram) president and newly-elected MP from Nagina, Chandrashekhar Azad, has staked his claim as the front runner leader of the deprived section of society.

Azad has announced to contest the bypolls to 10 assembly seats in UP.

Bahujan Samajwadi Party, the sole representative of the underprivileged section of society for over four decades, is bracing for the challenge posed by the ‘greenhorn’ of UP politics.

The reinstatement of Akash Anand, nephew of BSP supremo Mayawati, as her successor is seen as an effort to counter the challenge posed by Chandrashekhar Azad. Mayawati also appointed Akash Anand as the party’s national coordinator. She decided to reappoint her nephew following a sustained campaign on social media platforms by the BSP supporters for giving key responsibility to Akash Anand.

Akash Anand, who was removed from the position of BSP national coordinator and heir apparent of Mayawati on May 7, 2024 at the peak of the Lok Sabha campaign, months after being appointed to the post in December 2023, faces a resurgent Azad Samaj Party (Kanshiram) leader Chandrashekhar Azad.

Mayawati restored the position of Akash Anand in the party nearly three weeks after the results of the Lok Sabha elections were announced on June 4. BSP recorded its worst-ever performance in the recently-concluded Lok Sabha elections by polling only 9.39 per cent votes, the lowest in three decades, and it failed to win even a single seat.

“BSP president Mayawati ji has once again given Akash Anand a chance to work in the party with full maturity. He will continue to hold all his posts in the party as before. That is, he will remain Mayawati’s only successor along with being the party’s national coordinator,” read a statement issued by the BSP after a meeting of national office-bearers to review the 2024 Lok Sabha verdict here on June 23.

Akash Anand, the 28-year-old future face of the BSP, faces a new challenger in Nagina MP Chandrashekhar Azad who is trying to make deeper inroads among the younger generation of Dalit voters and has been able to achieve success as evident from his election to Lok Sabha from Nagina in Bijnor district.

In the recent Lok Sabha election, Chandrashekhar Azad won from Nagina, a reserved constituency in western Uttar Pradesh having a sizable Dalit electorate, by over 1,50,000 votes in a highly charged election, defeating his nearest rival Om Kumar of the Bharatiya Janata Party. BSP candidate Surendra Pal Singh polled only 13,272 votes in Nagina despite a focused campaign by the Dalit-centric party, trying hard to stop Azad.

All the five assembly segments of Nagina Lok Sabha constituency are part of Bijnor district. Mayawati, who served four times as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, had won from the Bijnor Lok Sabha seat in 1989, making her first parliamentary debut.

The Mayawati-led BSP remained a key political player in the electoral horizon of Uttar Pradesh during the last over three decades. The BSP formed the government in UP on its own strength by winning a simple majority in the 2007 UP assembly elections, by winning 206 out of total 403 seats in state assembly.

The BSP witnessed a sharp decline in the last decade. In the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, the BSP polled 27.42 per cent votes, winning 20 seats, while in 2024 its vote share dipped by two-thirds to 9.39 per cent, with more than 70 out of its 80 candidates failing to save deposits.