Seven years after expelling former BSP national vice-president Jai Prakash Singh over his remarks against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Mayawati has now reinducted him into the party.
The BSP supremo brought back Singh into the party after he met her in Delhi on November 7, following which she also appointed him as the party in-charge for the poll-bound West Bengal and Odisha.
At a BSP meeting held in Lucknow in July 2018, when he was party national vice-president and central coordinator, Singh, while floating a proposal to project Mayawati as the party’s PM candidate in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, had questioned Rahul Gandhi’s credentials to lead the country due to his mother Sonia Gandhi’s “foreign origin”.
At the same meeting, drawing an analogy with two leading characters in the Bollywood classic “Sholay”, Singh had purportedly called Modi “Gabbar Singh” and Mayawati “Thakur”, claiming that like Thakur’s victory over Gabbar in the film, the BSP chief would prevail over the PM. Subsequently, Mayawati expelled him from the BSP.
Singh, who belongs to the Jatav (Dalit) community, had joined the BSP in 2003. After his expulsion, he joined Chandrashekhar Aazad’s Bhim Army at a public meeting in Delhi. However, he distanced from Aazad when he floated his party Azad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram) in March 2020.
Singh later started working for the BSP “independently”, running a programme “Bahujan Mission Bachao, Desh Bachao”.
Following his reinduction into the BSP, Singh, in a post on “X”, apologised for his “past mistakes”, pledging to follow Mayawati’s orders in the future.
Speaking to The Indian Express, Singh said, “When I was out of BSP, I worked independently for the party for more than seven years. I had resolved to wait for my return to the party.”
In September, Mayawati revoked expulsion of former Rajya Sabha MP Ashok Siddharth and reinducted him into the party fold after he publicly apologised for his “mistakes”. She also appointed Siddharth as the party’s central coordinator for four states—Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and Gujarat.
Siddharth, the father-in-law of Mayawati’s nephew and BSP national convener Akash Anand, was expelled from the party in February this year on charges of “anti-party activities” and was blamed for “spoiling” Akash’s political career.
In September, Mayawati also brought former BSP central-state coordinator Nitin Singh on board, who was expelled from the party in February on charges of “encouraging groupism and indulging in anti-party activities”. He has now been asked to handle the party affairs in J&K and Himachal Pradesh.
In March this year, Mayawati had even removed Akash as the BSP national coordinator before expelling him from the party, attributing her action to her nephew “coming under the influence” of his father-in-law Siddharth. However, barely two months later, the BSP chief brought Akash back into the party as its chief national coordinator and then elevated him to the position of its national convener.
These reinductions are part of Mayawati’s roadmap to revive and rejuvenate the BSP ahead of the 2027 UP Assembly elections, party sources said.
The BSP has been in political wilderness in Uttar Pradesh for the past several years. In the 2022 UP Assembly polls, the party had managed to win just one seat out of the state’s 403 seats with its vote share dipping to 12.8%. In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the party had failed to open its account.
“All the senior leaders who have been brought back into the BSP had risen through the ranks. They had spent more than a decade working in various positions in the party, who have a good understanding of its mission and structure. Their experience would be useful in the party’s aim of rebuilding itself,” said a BSP leader.
Addressing a large rally near the Kanshi Ram memorial in Lucknow on October 9, Mayawati had asserted that her party will fight the UP elections on its own steam, ruling out any alliances. She had also urged the BSP’s leaders and workers to intensify efforts to bring the party to power and make her the CM for fifth time.
Recently, in a bid to revive her outreach to Muslims and bring together the community with her traditional Dalit vote, Mayawati has also revived the BSP’s “Muslim Samaj Bhaichara Sangathan” across UP, which she had suspended following her party’s 2022 poll rout. She had then criticised the minority community for not backing her party.