Mishra’s journey

Several people would have been mystified by the emergence of Satish Mishra as the Brahmin face of the Bahujan Samaj Party. As the story goes, this lawyer from Lucknow had been a BJP sympathiser till a combination of circumstances and accidents made him Mayawati’s most trusted aide. While he was in the BJP camp, though not as a full-time member, Mishra had got into a spot of bother with a false CBI case being filed against him. An influential BJP member had intervened to get him out of the mess. While this was happening, Mayawati became chief minister in May 2002 and offered Mishra the post of advocate general. Mishra was caught in a bind but got the green light from the BJP leader to take the position. While she was in office, he was said to be impeccably professional, but it was when Mayawati was out of office and facing litigation that the relationship strengthened. According to Mishra’s former mentor in the BJP, it was during this time that he gained her trust as he stood by her and helped her through the cases. In time, the link with the BJP weakened and finally broke. The rest, as they say, is history. For the record, well before the Uttar Pradesh poll results were declared, Mishra was openly telling others that his party would cross the 200-seat mark.