When Rajya Sabha MP Sandeep Pathak announced his decision to quit the AAP at a press conference on April 24, he said it was possible that many in the audience were seeing him for the first time. His apparent emphasis was on his image as an unassuming leader who stayed away from the limelight.

“You all know that I never put myself in front. Many of you must be seeing me for the first time or must have seen me only in photos. I always placed the party before me. I placed Kejriwal ji before me. The lakhs of volunteers who are working selflessly for the AAP, I put them in front,” Pathak said before declaring that he was ending his 10-year-long association with the party.

At the press conference, Pathak was seated next to fellow Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha, who spoke before him and announced that he and six other MPs in the Upper House belonging to the AAP were leaving the party and would join the BJP. The contrast between the two leaders was unmistakable—Chadha had been the face of the AAP on television as its national spokesperson and was amongst the party’s most recognisable faces, while Pathak, true to what he said at the presser, had stayed behind the scenes.

Even in the aftermath of the defection by seven out of the 10 AAP members in the Rajya Sabha, it was Chadha who got the maximum attention in the public eye, for he was the best known amongst the MPs. However, the spotlight has fast turned to Pathak. The immediate reason for this is that just days after Pathak’s departure from the AAP came the news that two FIRs were purportedly filed against him in AAP-ruled Punjab. He is also generating interest because of the importance of the role he had in the AAP and how his exit has affected the party leadership.

Pathak was a lesser-known member of Team Kejriwal, tasked with important assignments but who stayed away from the media glare. The first time that the political circles in Delhi took note of him was when the AAP nominated him to the Rajya Sabha in April 2022.

An aspect of his background that generated interest was his impressive academic record. The 46-year-old Pathak comes from a village in the Mungeli district of Chhattisgarh. He completed his bachelor's in Science in Bilaspur and got his master’s degree at the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, Hyderabad, and the National Chemical Laboratory, Pune. He earned a PhD from the University of Cambridge, with his research focusing on high-temperature superconducting materials. He pursued post-doctoral research at the University of Oxford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, as an assistant professor, where his work focused on the fabrication of perovskite-based photovoltaic devices and photo-physical properties.

Pathak left his academic career and joined the AAP in 2017. He was tasked by the party to carry out surveys in Punjab before the Assembly election that year. He was a member of the AAP’s backroom team, which worked together with the political consultancy group I-PAC to formulate the party’s strategy for the Assembly election in Delhi in 2020.

His role in building the AAP’s organisation in Punjab is well acknowledged by party leaders. He conducted surveys to understand the issues that resonated on the ground. He was amongst the main party strategists who devised the party’s outreach to the people. His nomination to the Rajya Sabha in 2022 from Punjab was viewed as a reward he had earned for his contribution to the party’s electoral success in the State.

In December 2022, the AAP created the post of National General Secretary (Organisation), and Pathak became the first person to occupy the position. The appointment elevated Pathak to the top levels of the party hierarchy. He had a pivotal role in the party’s expansion plans, which were to build its organisational structure and put in place systems for the organisation to work effectively. He was also a member of the AAP’s political affairs committee, the highest decision-making body in the party.

In what was a clear indication of his importance in the AAP and his closeness to Kejriwal, Pathak was amongst the very few people who met the party supremo when he was in Tihar jail in the national capital after his arrest in the excise policy case in 2024. Pathak held two meetings with Kejriwal in prison in April 2024. However, the jail authorities then barred Pathak from meeting Kejriwal, saying that by holding a press conference where he shared messages from Kejriwal, he had violated jail rules.

Pathak was amongst the party’s top leaders who received Kejriwal at his residence after his release from jail on bail on September 14, 2024.

The demotion and the departure

However, in recent months, especially after the AAP’s defeat in the Assembly election in Delhi in February 2025, Pathak is perceived to have been sidelined in the party’s scheme of things. In March 2025, he was divested of his responsibility as in charge of party affairs in Punjab and Gujarat. Kejriwal’s long-time confidant and former Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi, Manish Sisodia, was appointed the Punjab in-charge, while Gopal Rai, one of the party’s founding members, was given the charge of Gujarat. Pathak was handed the charge of his home state Chhattisgarh.

While Punjab is the only State the AAP now rules, Kejriwal is said to be extremely keen that the party make an impact in Gujarat. Chhattisgarh is, in comparison, a far less significant item in the AAP’s future plans. For these reasons, the organisational rejig was seen as lowering Pathak’s importance in the party.

A senior AAP leader said Pathak’s exit was completely unforeseen and took Kejriwal by surprise. According to the leader, the AAP national convenor believed till the very end that Pathak would not leave the party.

Kejriwal, the leader said, was alerted about the imminent exit of the Rajya Sabha MPs, and he reached out to them, except for Chadha and Maliwal, to discuss their issues and try and prevent them from leaving. As per the leader, Kejriwal met Pathak for close to two hours on April 23, and he was confident he had averted Pathak’s departure. Kejriwal is learnt to have been impacted most by Pathak’s exit.

On May 2, just days after he parted ways with the AAP, the quiet political existence of Pathak was shattered as he found himself at the centre of some dramatic scenes. Punjab Police landed in the national capital in connection with two FIRs filed against Pathak in the State and he made a hasty exit through the back gate of his Pandara Park residence in an apparent effort to evade the police.

Details of the charges have not been made public by the Punjab Police so far, even as the BJP, Pathak’s new party, has decried the move as a case of political vendetta.

On May 5, Pathak along with Chadha and fellow MPs Rajendra Gupta and Ashok Mittal, who have also quit the AAP and joined the BJP, met President Droupadi Murmu, and submitted a representation claiming that the AAP had unleashed vendetta politics against them.

“You cannot save a government through such dirty tactics. If you want to retain power, you must work honestly. If you think you can stop us through false and fabricated FIRs, that is not possible. We have stepped out ready to sacrifice everything and will do what is right for the country,” Pathak said after the meeting with the President.

However, the bitterness between Pathak and the AAP is now out in the open and the gloves are off. Shortly after Pathak and other MPs met the President, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann too called on her with a plea that the seven Rajya Sabha MPs who had left the party to join the BJP should be recalled as their merger with the saffron party is illegal. And responding to a question on the allegation made by the MPs that the Punjab government was acting in a vindictive manner against them, he said, “I want to clarify that cases will be registered against the MPs. They have not secured themselves by joining the BJP. Going to the BJP does not mean that they have now got a ‘suraksha kavach’ [safety armour].”

The low-profile Pathak finds himself in the spotlight, and it is a difficult place to be.

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