Mishra's wings clipped, no longer BSP's No. 2
Sanjay Singh Posted online: Tuesday , Mar 30, 2010 at 0119 hrs
Lucknow : Amidst the controversy over Mayawati's currency garland, an
important development in the BSP has passed almost unnoticed. Party
general secretary Satish Chandra Mishra, who was considered architect
of the BSP's Dalit-Brahmin social engineering that catapulted the
party into power in UP, has been asked to stay away from political
matters. Instead, Mishra has been made head of the party's newly
formed legal cell and asked to concentrate on legal matters of the
party and the government.
Mayawati herself announced Mishra's new role at the March 15 rally.
Mishra would not involve himself in political programmes, she said.
Lest there should be any confusion, she also announced that Energy
Minister Ramvir Upadhyaya would work on associating Brahmins with the
party while MP Dhananjay Singh would woo the Kshatriyas.
Mishra had emerged as the second most powerful man in the BSP after
the formation of the BSP government in May 2007. He enjoyed tremendous
clout as party general secretary. Mayawati created a State Advisory
Council (SAC), giving it the task of reviewing the work of government
departments and formulating plans and policies, and made Mishra its
chairman. In this capacity, Mishra regularly summoned ministers and
officers for meetings. Naturally, he came to be regarded as the
'number two' in the party.
Party leaders say that by clipping Mishra's wings, Mayawati has tried
to reassure the Dalits, her party's core constituency, that there is
no number two in the BSP, and that she is the only leader. In the
past, she has stated that after her death too, the BSP will be headed
by a Dalit. She used the rally to reassure the Dalits that the BSP is
their party. In fact, she told the gathering, "Main Dalit samaj ka sir
neecha nahin hone doongi kisi keemat par."
Mayawati never felt the need to reassure the Dalits until the BSP's
poor show in the Lok Sabha polls last year. While she dreamt of
becoming the PM, the BSP got only 20 seats, behind the Congress's 21
and the SP's 22. Clearly, the 'sarvjan formula' had failed to click.
Worse, the Congress revival threatened to erode the BSP's Dalit vote
bank. Traditionally, the Dalits had been Congress supporters and under
Rahul Gandhi the Congress was making efforts to reach out to them.
Rahul himself was making much-publicised visits to Dalit houses.
Further, the feedback that Mayawati got from BSP workers suggested
that sections of Dalits were getting disillusioned. Not only was the
government not doing anything for them, the character of the party was
changing with people from other communities holding dominant
positions. It was then that Mayawati realised that she needed to
reassure the Dalits. This was when the erosion of Mishra's authority
began.
In a party meeting held to review the election results, Mayawati
announced that Mishra would devote himself mainly to fighting legal
battles of the party and the government while she herself would take
care of associating non-Dalits with the party. Quietly, the SAC was
made defunct — it has not held a single meeting after the Lok Sabha
debacle. With her announcement on March 15, Mayawati completed the
process of cutting Mishra to size.
Simultaneously, Mayawati took several administrative steps, which
included reservation for Dalits in government contracts, a programme
to increase Dalit participation in co-operatives, ensuring that the DM
and the SSP — at one stage even the DGP — visited the spot whenever
there was a crime against Dalits, and installation of solar lamps in
Ambedkar villages.
Mayawati started giving important positions to Dalits in the
administration. Last month, she appointed Net Ram, a Dalit officer, as
the Additional Cabinet Secretary in her CMO and ordered that all files
be routed through him. Until then, files were routed through V S
Pandey, also an Additional Cabinet Secretary. She appointed former
Lucknow DM Chandra Bhanu as secretary in the CMO, taking the number of
Dalit officers to four, the other two being Vijai Singh and Anil Sant,
both secretaries. Pandey, who was Principal Secretary of Information
and Public Relations, was later removed, reportedly for his handling
of the controversy over the currency garland.
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