New Delhi, October 04: Once the Man Friday of Mayawati, Satish Chandra Mishra has now been virtually dumped by the Uttar Pradesh chief minister and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo.
He has been divested of all high-profile political responsibilities and instead told to concentrate on her legal battles.
The latest instance of humiliation is that he was not accommodated in any of the Parliament standing committees.
Mishra was the member of several Parliament panels, including home, petroleum, MP Local Area Development Scheme and external affairs, in the 14th Lok Sabha.
This time, he was reportedly keen to head the committee on industries, but Mayawati nominated party MP Akilesh Dasgupta for the post. Dasgupta, the son of former UP chief minister Banarasi Dasgupta, defected to the BSP from the Congress last year.
Sources said though Mishra is the BSP’s seniormost parliamentary party leader, he was not taken into confidence while deciding the party’s nominees for various House panels.
Brajesh Pathak, a young aggressive Brahmin MP, has been inducted into the committee on home affairs. Party MP Jai Prakash has been made a member of the committee on commerce while Veer Singh is a member of the committee on SC/ST welfare. Vijay Bahadur Singh and Shriram Pal are members of the committees on law and justice and IT respectively.
Mystery shrouds Mishra’s sudden decline in the party. Party sources said “only behenji would be able to answer” why the BSP’s national general secretary has been completely sidelined of late.
There is even speculation that a peeved Mishra may join the Congress.
Sources said Mayawati was not happy with the way Mishra, who is her defence counsel, has been handling her cases – the Rs 50-crore disproportionate assets case, Rs 175-crore Taj Heritage Corridor case and the cases relating to her memorials and statues.
That could be the reason why Mishra has fallen out of favour with the BSP chief. His troubles could multiply if he fails to deliver goods on the legal front, sources indicated.
The talk in the Lucknow power corridors is that high-profile bureaucrat Navneet Sehgal, who is secretary to the chief minister and chairman of the Uttar Pradesh Power Development Corporation, has replaced Mishra as Mayawati’s comrade-in-arms.
Mayawati had earlier cited Mishra’s “illness” on account of a slipped disc and his pre-occupation with her legal matters as reasons for his political marginalisation.
But signs of tension between them were visible after the BSP’s dismal performance in the Lok Sabha elections in May.
Former advocate general of UP and Rajya Sabha member, Mishra was the chief architect of the BSP’s social engineering of bringing Brahmins and Dalits together. He was instrumental in bringing Brahmins to the BSP fold, which gave the party a stunning victory in the assembly elections.
But the formula didn’t click in the Lok Sabha polls. Stung by her party’s poor show and amid criticism that she was ignoring her core Dalit constituency, Mayawati has since scaled down her love for “sarvajan samaj”. With Mishra out of the frame, she has herself taken up the responsibility of consolidating the party’s upper caste support base. In a recent interaction with the media in Lucknow, she said Mishra would only “assist” her in garnering upper caste support and will restrict himself to legal matters.
His new role was announced by Mayawati after a long meeting of BSP MPs, MLAs, MLCs and ministers at the party headquarters.
—Agencies