As LS poll looms, Mayawati names 28-yr-old nephew as her successor. Who is Akash Anand?

News Network

December 10, 2023

Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leaders on Sunday said party president Mayawati had named her nephew Akash Anand her successor as party chief. The announcement was made during a meeting in Lucknow to discuss the coming Lok Sabha elections. The BSP president has yet to make an official declaration.

Party leaders said the BSP chief gave Akash the responsibility to strengthen the party in states apart from Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, a task he had already been handling in the run-up to the recent Assembly elections.

Akash, the son of Mayawati’s younger brother Anand Kumar, oversaw the party’s poll preparation in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana, and Chhattisgarh. In a departure from the party’s usual strategy of not organising padayatras and demonstrations, in August he led a 14-day padayatra in Rajasthan where he has been in charge of the party’s affairs since last year. The party failed to match its 2018 performance of winning six seats, bagging only the constituencies of Sadulpur and Bari.

Akash played a role in the campaigns in MP, Chhattisgarh, and Telangana too. In June, the BSP chief deployed him and Rajya Sabha MP Ramji Gautam, the central coordinator for these states, to prepare and launch the election campaign on issues concerning Dalits, religious minorities, OBCs, and tribals. On August 9, Akash led a foot march in Bhopal during which there was an attempt to gherao the Raj Bhavan, raising the issues of the marginalised. Despite its efforts, the party failed to open its account in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Telangana.

Akash completed his schooling in Delhi and his MBA degree in London. He returned to India in 2017 and in May of that year accompanied Mayawati to Saharanpur where a Thakur-Dalit clash had occurred. He was introduced to party workers in September 2017, a few months after the BJP came to power in the state after registering a massive victory in an election in which the BSP finished third with 19 seats.

Akash became more active politically in the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha election and was credited with bringing his aunt over to social media platform X. In 2019, a day after the Election Commission banned Mayawati from campaigning for 48 hours, Akash took to the stage and addressed his first rally, urging people to vote for the SP-BSP-RLD alliance.

SP chief Akhilesh Yadav and then RLD president Ajit Singh also joined him on stage. A few weeks after the alliance’s defeat, Mayawati appointed him the party’s national coordinator and tasked him with reaching out to the youth, especially those from the Dalit community, and bringing them into the BSP fold.

After the UP Assembly polls last year, the BSP chief told the cadre that she would send Akash to different parts of UP to collect “truthful progress reports of work done by the party” and encourage youth workers.

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Hundreds of Palestinian kids kidnapped, imprisoned, tortured by Israel: UN expert expresses shock

News Network

November 14,2024

The UN special rapporteur for Palestine has slammed Israel’s parliament for passing a law authorizing the detention of Palestinian children, who are “tormented often beyond the breaking point” in Israeli custody.

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, in a Thursday post on X, characterized the experiences of Palestinian minors in Israeli detention as extreme and often inhumane.

The UN expert highlighted the grave impact of this policy, noting that up to 700 Palestinian minors are taken into custody each year, a practice she described as part of an unlawful occupation that views these children as potential threats.

Albanese said Palestinian minors in Israeli custody are “tormented often beyond the breaking point” and that “generations of Palestinians will carry the scars and trauma from the Israeli mass incarceration system.”

She further criticized the international community for its inaction, suggesting that ongoing diplomatic efforts, which often rely on the idea of resuming negotiations for peace, have contributed to normalizing such human rights violations against Palestinian children and the broader population.

The comments by Albanese came in response to Israel’s parliament (Knesset) passing a law on November 7 that authorizes the detention of Palestinian children under the age of 14 for “terrorism or terrorist activities.”

Under the legislation, a temporary five-year measure, once the individuals turn 14, they will be transferred to adult prison to continue serving their sentences.

Additionally, the law allows for a three-year clause that enables courts to incarcerate minors in adult prisons for up to 10 days if they are considered dangerous. Courts have the authority to extend this duration if necessary, according to the Knesset.

The legislation underscores a shift in the treatment of minors and raises alarms among human rights advocates regarding the legal and ethical ramifications of detaining children and the conditions under which they may be held.

Thousands of Palestinians, including hundreds of children and women, are currently in Israeli jails—around one-third without charge or trial. Also, an unknown number are arbitrarily held following a wave of arrests in the wake of the regime's genocidal war on Gaza.

Since the onset of the Gaza war, the Israeli regime, under the supervision of extremist minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, has turned prisons and detention centers into “death chambers,” the ministry of detainees and ex-detainees’ affairs in Gaza says.

Violence, extreme hunger, humiliation, and other forms of abuse of Palestinian prisoners have been normalized across Israel’s jail system, reports indicate.

Over 270 Palestinian minors are being detained by Israeli authorities, in violation of UN resolutions and international treaties that forbid the incarceration of children, as reported by Palestinian rights organizations.

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