The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is feeling threatened more from quiet and reticent Sandeep Pathak than suave Raghav Chadha.While Chadha brings his carefully curated “common man’s hero” image and information on the party’s fiscal muscle to the BJP table, it is Pathak who brings the entire organisational strategy of AAP with him. “If Chadha was the Delhi team’s face in Punjab, it was Pathak who was the backbone,” said a senior party leader, who has worked closely with the two leaders in years preceding the 2022 Assembly poll in the state.This leader, along with many others, is convinced that there was little chance of Chadha managing to affect a large-scale defection of Punjab MLAs, at least immediately.In fact, Chadha’s claims will help the AAP MLAs gain a freer hand in managing affairs of their constituencies.Many constituencies have three power centres — the MLA, halqa Incharge and a key member close to the central party leadership.The MLAs had been privately resentful of this “excessive control and pressure”.As AAP makes a desperate bid to keep its flock together, these MLAs are likely to get some freedom on managing their own constituencies.To stop defections, the party leadership may also shelve its plan of replacing some of its sitting MLAs in the polls. For the BJP, Pathak is “more precious” import from AAP, considering that Punjab is all set to go to the polls in a few months from now.Perhaps, realising his significance, AAP brass had called him to Delhi earlier this week, asking him to get in touch with two other MPs who have now defected to the BJP and convince them to stick with the party. But Pathak, still smarting from his forced departure to Chattisgarh last year after the Delhi Assembly poll, had reportedly made up his mind to quit AAP.Since Pathak had hand-picked some of the key party organisation members, the fear in AAP is palpable that he might use his influence on them to shake the AAP foundation he built and use them to give a fillip to BJP’s poll campaign in the Vidhan Sabha poll.A senior minister in the state’s AAP government recalled how in the 2024 General Election, Pathak managed the entire poll strategy and campaign single-handedly. “His soft demeanour endeared him to many, and they continue to keep him in high regard,” he said.