Brajesh Pathak: A sharp politician who knows which way winds are blowing

The new Deputy Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Brajesh Pathak, is a rare politician who has emerged in the BJP after crossing a lot of political spectrum in the state.

He joined the party in 2016 after breaking away from the BSP after joining the Congress.

Pathak entered politics as a student leader, becoming the vice-president of the Lucknow University Students’ Union in 1989 and president in 1990. Interestingly, it was Vinay Tiwari, son of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s staunch and strongman Vinay Shankar Tiwari, who helped him. popularity and winning university elections. The two were close friends and remained together during the early years of their student life and active politics.

Tiwari, who claimed to have brought Pathak into politics, said, “Perhaps he is the first politician of non-BJP origin in Uttar Pradesh, who has done so much good for himself by bypassing prominent BJP people.” Recalling his university days, Tiwari said, “He was not very popular, but was good at organization. But one quality that he saw was that he was a good meteorologist.”

Both he and Pathak will join the BSP together. Vinay, a former MLA from Chilupar, switched to the SP ahead of the 2022 assembly elections.

Pathak, a law student who completed his LLB in 1991, served as a law minister in Adityanath’s first cabinet.

SK Dwivedi, a retired professor at Lucknow University, said, “He was never rude and always behaved well unlike many other student leaders of the time, when Pathak was learning the ropes as a struggling student leader.” The son of a homeopathic doctor, Pathak was born in 1964 in Mallawan, Hardoi and did his schooling from Subhash Inter College, Bangarmau. “While in school he was shy but very smart in studies. Every day he used to travel 17 km from Mallavan to reach school. We were all surprised when he entered politics as he was too simple and soft-spoken for the field. Vinod Gupta, who studied commerce in class XI and XII with Pathak, said and now runs a flour mill.

Even when Pathak joined Congress in 1992, he had to contest his first assembly election in 2002 from Mallavan, but he lost by a marginal margin of 150 votes.

Sensing a change in the political winds, almost two years later, he left the Congress and rode the elephant (BSP). “Behenji (BSP chief Mayawati) herself called her and offered her the Unnao Lok Sabha seat,” a former BSP colleague said on the condition of anonymity. Mayawati was then testing a social alliance with Brahmins under the slogan ‘Hathi nahi Ganesh hai, Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh hai (the elephant also represents Hindu deities)’.

Soon after winning his first election, he became a close associate of BSP general secretary Satish Chandra Mishra and was considered close to Mayawati in organizing rallies. In 2009, Mayawati sent him to the Rajya Sabha where he was the party’s chief whip. But his success was short-lived and he lost from the same seat during the Narendra Modi wave in the 2014 general election and finished third.

In the 2012 state election, BSP had given ticket to his wife Namrata from Unnao Sadar in which she stood third. Regaining the changing political climate, he joined the BJP ahead of the 2017 assembly elections. Interestingly, he did so just a day after he organized a mega rally for Mayawati in Agra. This proved to be the turning point of his career. The BJP fielded him from the prestigious Lucknow Central Assembly seat, which he won by defeating Samajwadi Party strongman Ravidas Mehrotra by 7,000-odd votes and entered the assembly for the first time. He was rewarded in 2017 by making him a law minister in the Adityanath-led government. Since then his stock has only increased in the party.

Analysts believe that the BJP has rewarded him for his networking skills and for cementing the party’s support base among Brahmins in the 2022 assembly elections.

Pathak told ET, “Whatever responsibility is given to me, I will fulfill it with full honesty and integrity.

A Lord Hanuman-bhakt (devotee), he has replaced Dinesh Sharma, who is also a Brahmin, as the deputy CM. Former professor Dwivedi said, “He has been very active in the last five years, which Dinesh Sharma lacked. He never calls anyone approaching him for any work. He clearly knows that people How to keep him happy.”

In the recent assembly election, he was fielded from Lucknow Cantt, where he defeated Raju Gandhi of SP by 39,512 votes. Some believe that his seat was changed from Lucknow Central to Cantt, which was considered a safe seat for the BJP, as Mehrotra, the SP candidate from Lucknow Central, was considered a good contestant. Mehrotra won his election.

Originally published at Pen 18