IIT professor-turned-politician Dr Sandeep Pathak's appointment as national general secretary in charge of organisation in the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), announced today, catapults him to the top rung of the party.
The development makes it clear that Pathak is party convenor Arvind Kejriwal's key man for building organisation ahead of the Lok Sabha polls in 2024.
The announcement was tweeted by the Delhi Chief Minister, who said the party will have to build an organisation in every nook and corner of the country. Pathak has been appointed as the Rashtriya Sangathan Mahamantri or national general secretary in charge of organisation. He will also be a permanent invitee to the Political Affairs Committee of the AAP, the apex decision-making body of the party.
The 43-year-old Pathak has worked his way up in the AAP quietly, with the tasks assigned to him being of the behind-the-scenes nature. He had played an important role in the AAP's victory in the Assembly elections in Punjab earlier this year, helping it with surveys and also building an organisation down to the booth level. He was rewarded for his contribution to the Punjab victory with a Rajya Sabha nomination.
Pathak was later given the very important task of preparing the party for the high stakes Assembly polls in Gujarat when he was named the AAP's state in-charge of Gujarat. While the party did not live up to the bold claims made by it about winning the elections, it also failed to replace the Congress as the number two party in the state. However, AAP leaders feel that the party has managed to make an entry into the electoral politics of Gujarat and was there to stay. The performance in Gujarat has also helped the AAP become a national party.
Pathak has made a quantum leap from being an Assistant Professor at the Department of Energy Science and Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, to becoming a member of the inner circle of Kejriwal. His rise through the AAP ranks has been fairly rapid. He started out as a volunteer for the AAP in 2016 and was assigned the task of carrying out surveys for the party in the Assembly elections in Punjab in 2017. He was later in charge of designing the party's outreach in the Punjab polls of 2020.
