LUCKNOW: While elevation of Brajesh Pathak as the deputy CM hogged the swearing-in limelight, chairman of UP BJP induction committee, Laxmikant Bajpai, has said that the leaders inducted in from other parties were never given any assurance of being given any prominent position in the organisation or the government. Pathak switched over from BSP to BJP in 2016.
"People who come from other parties are accommodated under strict conditions. They need to prove their worth. After all, the party has to think about the morale and aspirations of its core cadre," he said, while speaking exclusively to TOI on Sunday. Induction committee records suggest that out of 440 inducted leaders, only 17 were given tickets to contest state polls, of which 10 won.
Interestingly, Pathak, who joined the BJP only six years ago in 2016 after defecting from Mayawati's BSP, will tower over senior BJP leaders including nine-time MLA Suresh Khanna, five-time MLA and former UP BJP chief Surya Pratap Sahi, current UP BJP chief Swatantra Dev Singh and senior BJP legislator, Satish Mahana, who was dropped from the Yogi Adityanath-2 cabinet.
While Bajpai refused to comment on the elevation of Pathak, party insiders said that the development had indeed triggered an element of angst and palpable rumblings among the core party cadre. They point out that though Keshav Maurya, the other deputy CM, lost from Sirathu assembly seat, he happened to be a former UP BJP chief under whose watch BJP registered an emphatic win in the 2017 assembly elections. Pathak on the other hand has no such accomplishment for the organisation, barring whatever role he played in the Brahmin outreach.
"The heartburn is obvious among the core party cadre and the leaders who gave their entire life to the party. But then we cannot question the party leadership's decision," said a senior BJP leader.
Pathak started his political career through student politics. In 1990, he was elected as Lucknow University Students Union (LUSU) president with the support of Vinay Tewari, the son of Gorakhpur's strongman Harishankar Tewari. Pathak later joined the Congress and contested 2002 assembly elections from Mallawan assembly seat in Hardoi, but lost. He then switched over to Mayawati's BSP and won 2004 Lok Sabha elections from Unnao -- in what catapulted him as one of the key Brahmin rank of BSP which was fast graduating from `Bahujan' to `Sarvajan' ideology.
When Mayawati stormed to power with full majority for the first time in 2007, Pathak and BSP supremo's close aide and the other Brahmin functionary, SC Mishra, were credited for implementing the social engineering formula that envisioned amalgamation of Dalits with the upper caste. Pathak was subsequently sent to Rajya Sabha in 2009.
The galactic rise of BJP under the leadership of PM Narendra Modi at the Centre and dwindling fortune of BSP, however, made Pathak take a deft political move and in 2016, he jumped ship to join the BJP. In 2017 assembly elections, when BJP registered a landslide victory, Pathak won from Lucknow Central by a slender margin of around 5000 votes. Yet the win gave Pathak a cabinet berth in Yogi Adityanath government.
This time, he was shifted to Lucknow cantonment seat, which is considered a safe seat for BJP.
