 "Pankaj Gupta: The man behind AAP's rise")
His long-time associate, Arvind Kejriwal, who had shot to fame because of his association with anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare and the Jan Lok Pal Bill, was shedding his activist robes for a plunge into politics.
A decade ago, it was politics that had come between the two - while Gupta wanted to wage a political battle, Kejriwal chose to remain apolitical.
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Soon after it was announced Kejriwal would start a political party, Gupta telephoned him and expressed his intention to join the movement. Kejriwal asked him to come aboard and help set up an organisation of activists to fight the Delhi Assembly elections.
Gupta, 47, responded with alacrity and quit his job, which fetched him Rs 35-40 lakh a year at KMG Infotech, a US-based software outsourcing company. He headed the firm's operations in Gurgaon and led the 250-strong staff. Earlier, he had spent considerable time working with software giant Tata Consultancy Services in the US.
Now, Gupta was back at the start. All he had was a battery of enthusiastic supporters who were ready to take on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress in electoral battles.
Soon, Gupta became a regular at Kejriwal's Ghaziabad residence, which served more as the party's war room, before the party office was shifted to Connaught Place. He would spend hours with party leaders Kejriwal, Yogendra Yadav, Kumar Vishwas, Manish Sisodia, Prashant Bhushan, etc, chalking strategies for the party. At one of these brainstorming sessions, Gupta was entrusted with registering the party with the Election Commission and generating financial support. His ties with the business community came in handy, and the party began to receive funds. While others became the party's public faces, Gupta worked behind the scenes. Though he interacted with the media at times, he was rarely seen as the man behind the rise of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
Gupta, AAP's general-secretary, is responsible for generating funds, managing the ever-increasing number of volunteers, expanding party offices in other states and selecting and screening candidates for the Lok Sabha elections. Under him, the AAP is now present across 309 districts.
If one has to draw an analogy, it can be said Gupta is to Kejriwal what Amit Shah is to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi or Ahmed Patel is to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi. His prowess with technology has rendered him indispensable to the party. "When Kejriwal became Delhi's chief minister (he resigned from the post on February 14), he comfortably handed over the party's reins to Gupta," says a party insider.
Gupta says he draws comfort from his decade-old association with Kejriwal. The two had worked together at Parivartan, a non-profit organisation, addressing issues related to income tax and the public distribution system. "One must get into politics to change the system. Arvind and I differed here," Gupta, grey-haired and dark complexioned, said on the terrace of the AAP office, which was swarming with workers and enthusiasts waiting to join the party.
Subhas Bhatia, Gupta's boss at KMG, said his employee always wanted to work for the poor. "He used to teach poor students, especially girls. He would spearhead the company's corporate social responsibility," says Bhatia, who has closely followed Gupta's career.
As an engineering student at Motilal Nehru Regional Engineering College in Allahabad, Gupta wanted to join politics. But at that time, there was no student union in that college. In 2007, Gupta found an opportunity. When various non-government organisations (NGOs), unions and others from different walks of life came together to form the Jan Prathinidhi Manch, he became one of the coordinators of the political movement. The organisation decided to contest the municipality elections in Delhi. It approached the public and asked it to nominate candidates, a practice followed by the AAP before the Delhi Assembly elections.
However, all its 12 candidates lost the elections and the movement fizzled out. "We had just three months to prepare for the polls. But we gained immensely from this experience," Gupta says.
The debacle failed to douse Gupta's enthusiasm and his long-cherished dream of joining politics. In 2011, he formed another organisation, Saksham, to help the candidates fighting the municipality elections in Gurgaon. Though the earlier process of screening and selecting the candidates was repeated, this time, it was restricted to urban centres. "It worked. We won two out of four seats," Gupta says, adding this experience added to his organisational skills, which he is now putting to use in the AAP.
Gupta says there is no dearth of people who want to join the party. After the Delhi elections, people are queuing up outside its offices. Now, there is a plan to merge smaller parties and a few NGOs with the AAP. "These small parties have to forgo their identities first. We don't wish to create an alliance with a hundred legs," Gupta clarifies.
On the competition, he says, "Do you know how many votes the Congress got in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls? Only 100 million! We already have 10 million people and the number is increasing fast." The party is upbeat about its prospects in Delhi, Haryana, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka and a few pockets in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.
On other challenges, Gupta says, "Sustenance was the biggest issue. So, I decided to save enough before taking a plunge into politics." His wife, too, is a software professional, currently on sabbatical. As of now, his biggest challenge is convincing his teenage son Mudit, a supporter of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, to see things from the perspective of the AAP.