BJP KANNAUJ MP Subrat Pathak (43), who was named in an FIR on Saturday for allegedly assaulting and verbally abusing a police team, has the image of a "Hindutva" leader in the constituency who claims to have inherited the RSS ideology from his father. A hub of perfume manufacturing, Kannauj is considered a Samajwadi Party (SP) bastion. Pathak fought and lost two Lok Sabha polls from here on a BJP ticket, fighting then SP scion Akhilesh Yadav in 2009, and Akhilesh’s wife Dimple Yadav in 2014, before capturing the seat from Dimple in 2019 by a thin margin of 12,353 votes. Pathak appears to enjoy the blessings of both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. A BJP leader said that during campaigning in both 2009 and 2014, Modi, then the chief minister of Gujarat, actively campaigned for him and even addressed public meetings in his support. On Monday, Pathak celebrated Adityanath's birthday by addressing a gathering in the Haseran area of Kannauj. He seems to have impressed leaders from the other side of the political fence as well. Sources say that when Mayawati became the CM in 2007, the BSP reached out to Pathak to join her party. He, however, refused and continued with the BJP. A BJP leader associated with Pathak said the BJP MP “inherited” the “nationalist ideology” from his father, Om Prakash Pathak, who was also associated with the RSS. The family's perfume business goes back to 1911, and Om Prakash served as the president of Kannauj’s Attar and Perfumers' Association for a while. Om Prakash's wife Saroj was elected chairman of Kannauj Nagar Palika in 2012. Having done his schooling from RSS-run Saraswati Shishu Mandir and Saraswati Vidya Mandir, Pathak did his graduation from PSM Degree College in Kannauj, where he first joined the ABVP and contested in the students’ union elections. He joined the BJP in 2000. After serving as district and state president of the BJP's youth wing, Pathak became the party's youngest district president in 2006 at the age of 26. In June 2015, he was appointed as a member of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) by the Narendra Modi government. Sources in the BJP said Pathak made his name in the Hindutva circles a month later, after he was booked in a case of communal clash between Hindus and Muslims. He was acquitted by a Kannauj court in that case along with all other 20 accused in 2018, after the prime witnesses turned hostile. After Pathak became MP in 2019, the BJP elevated him in the state organisation from secretary to general secretary, and appointed him in-charge of the Kashi region, which covers the Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency of PM Modi. In April 2020, the Kannauj police lodged an FIR against Pathak and his supporters for allegedly barging into the house of a tehsildar and assaulting him for alleged delay in distribution of foodgrains to people whose names he had recommended earlier. About the case, his Lok Sabha constituency representative Ajeet Kumar Srivastava says, “The case was dismissed as the allegation was false.” When current BJP state president Bhupendra Singh Chaudhary formed a new state team in March, Pathak was dropped from it. A senior party leader said, “Pathak had himself expressed a wish to take a break from organisational responsibilities, so that he could focus on his preparations for the next Lok Sabha polls. It is going to be a big challenge for him, because Akhilesh is likely to contest from Kannauj.” The SP keeps attacking Pathak to keep up the heat on him. After last week's incident in which he was booked, in an alleged bid to free some kidnapping accused, Akhilesh tweeted that while the police might have lodged an FIR against the MP, the public wants to know if he would be arrested. Alongside his political career, Subrat Pathak runs a cold storage and hotel business. He had taken a break for a couple of years from politics to run the family's perfume business.
