Mishra’s wings clipped,no longer BSP’s No. 2

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.