Bharat Pankhania
Bharat Ramji Nathoo Pankhania (born October 1960) is a British physician, academic and politician who served as Mayor of Bath from 2025 to 2026.
Dr. Bharat Pankhania was born in Kenya to an Indian family from Gujarat. When Pankhania was 14, the family immigrated to Leicester, England. Bharat moved to Bath, Somerset in 1991, and to Combe Down in 2008.
Pankhania qualified from the Welsh Nation Schools of Medicine, Cardiff, Wales and trained as a General Practitioner in 1989. He trained in Public Health Medicine and specialised in infectious diseases and Communicable Disease Control and worked in the field in the UK. In 2020, and during the COVID-19 pandemic, he became known as a public-health commentator on public health issues including infection control and vaccination policy and also published academic scholarship in this regard. He joined the University of Exeter Medical School in 2017 and served as a senior clinical lecturer until 2026, leaving following the social media posts controversy regarding the 2026 Hatzola arson attack. In 2022, Pankhania was appointed Director of the Bath Royal Literary and scientific institution trustees.
Pankhania was elected as a Liberal Democrat councillor for Combe Down ward on Bath and North East Somerset Council in the 2019 local elections. He was re-elected in 2023, and served as Deputy Mayor before being elected as the 798th Mayor of Bath, Somerset on 7 June 2025 by the city's charter trustees. He was the first person of Indian heritage to hold the office. He served as Mayor of Bath from June 2025 to March 2026. His theme for the year was 'Education is Empowerment'.
In late March 2026, shortly after the arson attach of four ambulances operated by the Jewish volunteer emergency service Hatzola in Golders Green, London, Pankhania shared posts on his personal X account, describing the attack that is being treated as an antisemitic hate crime by the Metropolitan Police, as an 'Israeli false flag operation'. Other posts Pankhania later shared called the attack insurance fraud. Pankhania was subsequently suspended from the Bath and North East Somerset (Banes) council by the Liberal Democrat party and was set to take training in “equalities and social media conduct” following the retweets. Pankhania later resigned from both his party and the mayorship. He was the first Bath mayor to resign since 1937. Pankhania subsequently apologised for the posts and deleted them.
As of June 2026, he remains an independent councillor on the Bath and North East Somerset Council.
Pankhania is married to Alison and they share two children.