Last week, a smiling Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan tightly embraced 43-year-old Congress MLA Sanjay Pathak, welcoming him into the BJP fold.
The reason why the CM personally went to the BJP office in Bhopal to usher in the two-time Congress MLA into the party was not just because he managed to poach another legislator from the Congress, but because Chouhan was aware of Pathak’s popularity in Khajuraho and adjoining Parliamentary seats.
Mining baron Pathak, the richest MLA in the state Assembly with declared assets worth `121 crore, is likely to become the game changer for the BJP in and around Khajuraho.
Pathak, a popular Brahmin face of the region, left the Congress after being denied a ticket to contest Lok Sabha polls from Khajuraho. Instead the party gave the ticket to his competitor and another Brahmin, Raja Pateria. In the 2013 Assembly elections, Pathak had won the Vijayraghogarh seat, which is one of the Assembly constituencies of Khajuraho.
According to political observers, Pathak, whose father was a minister in the Digvijaya Singh cabinet in the 1990s, is likely to severely damage the prospects of Pateria and the other Congress candidate in the adjoining regions of Damoh, Satna and Jabalpur.
“He has tremendous clout in and around Khajuraho because of his vast business empire and he is very liberal when it comes to spending money. The sitting BJP MP from Khajuraho, Jeetendra Singh Bundela, was facing massive anti-incumbency but with the induction of Pathak into the BJP, the prospects of Pateria who was on a very strong ground in Khajuraho has been severally jolted,” a Jabalpur-based observer said. He added that Pathak was likely to eat away into a sizeable number of Brahmin votes that would have been polled in favour of Pateria.
Pathak also operates bauxite and iron ore mines in Jabalpur district and owns a chain of hotels in Madhya Pradesh called SYNA, in Kanha National Park, Pench National Park, Khajuraho and in Jabalpur and Katni.
Pathak said he was forced to join the BJP as he was being ignored by the Congress. “It’s no longer the party of Nehru-Gandhi, and five-six individuals are running and ruining it. The party repeatedly insulted me by ignoring my demand to change the Khajuraho candidate who now will lose,” he claimed.