LUCKNOW: The Bahujan Samaj Party's national coordinator, Akash Anand, may not campaign in UP bypolls due in the nine assembly seats on Nov 13. The party is contesting all nine seats in the state. The young scion may also not campaign in Maharashtra and Jharkhand where the BSP will contest assembly elections as a solo party on Nov 13 and Nov 20.
In UP, party state president Vishwanath Pal has been given the charge to oversee the bypoll campaign for the candidates.
Sources in the party said that no campaign schedule of Akash Anand has been received for UP, so far. BSP did not win any of the nine seats, which will face bypolls, in the 2022 UP assembly elections.
Akash Anand has not campaigned in UP after May 7, the day voting for third phase of Lok Sabha elections took place in the state. He was divested of his post of national coordinator of BSP and also ceased to be party national president Mayawati's successor in the party following her "late night" order on May 7.
But, by then, he had already campaigned extensively in UP, holding as many as 17 rallies across the state, starting from his first rally in Nagina on April 6 and the last in Kanpur on May 1. Notably, BSP lost the Nagina seat, which it won in 2019, to Azad Samaj Party's Chandrashekhar Azad in 2024. BSP's vote percentage dropped from 19.4% in 2019 to 9.4% in 2024. The party also lost all ten seats it had won in UP in 2019.
When Akash Anand was reinstated on his posts in the party on July 1, it was seen as his "relaunch" in national politics by many. Mayawati, the very day, also announced him to be the BSP's star campaigner for Punjab and Uttarakhand assembly bypolls, the first election that the party faced after the Lok Sabha debacle.
The party, however, lost the Manglaur seat it held in Uttrakhand, in the bypolls.
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