Mayawati, stung by desertions, effects changes

Stung by the plummeting graph of the party due to growing number of desertions, BSP president Mayawati has affected major changes in the party organisation.

The BSP president has removed all existing zonal coordinators and has appointed new district supervisors in their place. The reason for the change is to maintain a close vigil on party workers in every district. To oversee the work of district supervisors, Ms Mayawati has appointed new zonal coordinators.

Ms Mayawati has also appointed four new party general secretaries — all of them belonging to OBC caste groups. The new party general secretaries are Suresh Kashyap, R.S. Kushwaha, Virendra Chauhan and Pratap Singh Baghel.

Apparently Ms Mayawati wants to stem the damage caused to the party with the exit of its top leaders like Swami Prasad Maurya and R.K. Chaudhary and send out a message that OBCs will continue to get importance within the BSP.

The BSP president is upset that the zonal coordinators of the party did not get a wind of the plans of Swami Prasad Maurya and R.K. Chaudhary to leave the party and were not vigilant enough to keep a track on their activities.

The district supervisors have been entrusted the task of ensuring the victory of BSP candidates in the Assembly constituencies in their segment.

“In districts and constituencies where the party is not in a strong position right now, Ms Mayawati has appointed two or more supervisors to ensure micro management. In all about 350 coordinators and supervisors have been appointed,” said a party functionary.

Ms Mayawati has also instructed the newly-appointed office-bearers to hold their meetings in small rooms instead of public community halls so that the deliberations are not leaked to the media.

Ms Mayawati, sources said, went an extra mile to convince her party cadres that the exit of senior leaders would not impact the fortuneless of the BSP in the upcoming 2017 elections.

She termed the media campaign against her and the BSP the handiwork of the BJP and warned party workers to beware of such canards in the coming days.

The BSP president is obviously apprehensive about reports that some other senior leaders from the party would stage a walkout in the coming weeks. The BSP suffered another jolt on Sunday evening when party’s general secretary Paramdev Yadav resigned from the party and levelled the same charges of the party having deviated from its ideology and turned into a money-centric party. Mr Yadav is the fourth senior leader to have quit the BSP in the past two weeks. Earlier, Swami Prasad Maurya, R K Chaudhary and former MLA Ravindra Nath Tripathi have resigned from the party.