New Delhi: Former AAP MP Sandeep Pathak was Monday appointed national secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Party, barely three months after he switched over from the Aam Aadmi Party.
The 46-year-old was once AAP’s key strategist, a permanent invitee to its political affairs committee and close to national convener and former Delhi CM, Arvind Kejriwal. Pathak was appointed national general secretary of the AAP in December 2022. Six months before that, he had been sent to the Rajya Sabha by AAP.
Not from a political family, Sandeep Pathak comes with a strong academic background, and his rise in politics has been driven by his work behind the scenes like surveys, election planning, organisation-building, candidate selection and understanding the ground realities.
He has now become one of the few low-profile leaders to hold important decision-making positions in both AAP and BJP.
Pathak was born in Chhattisgarh’s Batha village and moved to Bilaspur for his schooling. After completing his Bachelor of Science, he went on to pursue a Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge in the UK. He later studied at Oxford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US.
Before politics became his full-time career, Pathak was an assistant professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, in the department of energy science and engineering, which he joined in 2016. He left the institute in 2020.
His entry into politics, like Kejriwal’s, goes back to the Anna Hazare-led anti-corruption movement in 2011. Pathak was drawn to the movement before joining the party in 2016.
It was Punjab that eventually changed his political career. In 2017, Pathak was sent to the state to conduct surveys ahead of the Assembly elections. AAP’s performance in the 2017 election was disappointing. The party won 20 of the 117 seats, despite expectations of a much stronger showing. But Pathak stayed on with the Punjab organisation.
For the 2022 Assembly elections, he began working in the state nearly two years before the polls. His focus was on rebuilding the party organisation and taking it down to the village level. The effort paid off. AAP won 92 of the 117 seats and formed the government under Bhagwant Mann. Pathak was rewarded for his efforts by being appointed the party’s general secretary.
During his first visit to a constituency after becoming a Rajya Sabha MP, Pathak had spoken of his decision to leave “big jobs” abroad and return to India, describing it as a commitment to the country. He had said corruption was India’s biggest enemy and argued that the country’s problems with schools, hospitals and other public services stemmed from flawed politics.
“I was an IIT professor in Delhi—a government job—and had a comfortable life… I left that to join politics…. Countries that got independence after us have moved ahead of us. India is stuck because of corruption everywhere… because politics here is flawed. Schools and hospitals are flawed here because the politics here is flawed. Politicians have spoiled the politics here,” he had said.
Before Punjab, Pathak had also worked with Prashant Kishor during the AAP’s campaign for the 2020 Delhi Assembly elections. His responsibilities later expanded. He was made Gujarat in-charge and then co-in-charge of Himachal Pradesh.
In Himachal, he worked on building the party organisation ahead of the elections, but the AAP managed just 1.1 percent of the vote. Gujarat became a bigger focus, where the party won five seats and got 12.9 percent vote share in its first Assembly election.
He left academia for politics, where his rise in the past decade has been swift and unique. Sandeep Pathak thanked the top BJP leadership on X for his new assignment.
भारतीय जनता पार्टी द्वारा मुझे राष्ट्रीय मंत्री के रूप में महत्वपूर्ण दायित्व प्रदान करने के लिए मैं शीर्ष नेतृत्व का हृदय से आभार व्यक्त करता हूँ।
इस महत्वपूर्ण जिम्मेदारी के लिए माननीय प्रधानमंत्री श्री @narendramodi जी, माननीय राष्ट्रीय अध्यक्ष श्री @NitinNabin जी, माननीय… https://t.co/l2nU6tJSt8
— Dr. Sandeep Pathak (@SandeepPathak04) August 17, 2026
He said: “I express my heartfelt gratitude to the top leadership for assigning me the important responsibility of National Minister by the BJP. I extend my sincere thanks and gratitude to the Honorable Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi ji, Honorable National President Shri Nitin Nabin ji, Honorable Union Home and Cooperation Minister Shri Amit Shah ji, and Honorable National Organisation General Secretary Shri B L Santhosh ji for this important responsibility. I will continue to work tirelessly with complete devotion, dedication, and honesty to fulfill the trust and responsibility entrusted to me by the party, thereby further strengthening the organisation.”
(Edited by Viny Mishra)