Analysis: Can Sharad Pawar still pull a rabbit out of his hat?

Analysis: Has the clock stopped for Sharad Pawar?

By Anil Singh*

Mumbai: Has the clock stopped for Sharad Pawar? Or will the wily Maratha once again reset the political clock of Maharashtra? We won’t have to wait very long for the answer, the Maharashtra Assembly polls this year will show.

The numbers are stacked against Sharad Pawar, who founded the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in 1999, rebelling against the leadership of Sonia Gandhi.

The Election Commission of India declared on February 6, 2024, that the Ajit Pawar faction is the authentic NCP, as 57 of the 81 MPs, MLAs, and MLCs of the NCP are with him while only 28 are with his uncle Sharad Pawar. Even considering that five MLAs and one Lok Sabha MP gave affidavits supporting both factions, the Ajit Pawar camp had the majority, the ECI order said. 

Can Sharad Pawar survive with just 13 of the 53 MLAs (after NCP MLA from Pandharpur, Bharat Bhalke died of post-Covid complications in November 2020 and the BJP won the seat in the bypolls, reducing the NCP tally to 53) of his party siding with him? Most of his confidants such as Chhagan Bhujbal, Praful Patel and Dilip Walse-Patil have deserted him, leaving him only with Jayant Patil and Jitendra Awhad. Sharad Pawar’s daughter Supriya Sule, the apparent cause of the split, has the media connection but not the grassroots connection. 

Ajit Pawar has been building the party for the last two decades and most of the workers are with him. Only the old workers are loyal to his uncle. Unlike his uncle who has slowed down with age (83) and ailment (oral cancer), Ajit Pawar is energetic at 65. His day starts at 6 am, meeting visitors and party workers. He may be brash but is seen as decisive and dynamic. And many sympathise with him for being sidelined in favour of Supriya Sule. This is why the Sharad Pawar faction is not attacking him as aggressively as Uddhav Thackeray is attacking Eknath Shinde.

Apart from his blind love for his daughter, there is also the feeling that Sharad Pawar is losing his grip on state politics and that his time is up. Otherwise, so many of his loyalists would not have deserted him. 

Of course, a factor is the threat of the Enforcement Directorate. Maharashtra was ruled by the Maratha lobby for so long that they felt they could do as they pleased, making them vulnerable to any agency asking tough questions. One of the leaders who switched over to the Bharatiya Janata Party (Harshvardhan Patil of the Congress Party) famously said that he could sleep peacefully now.

The most vulnerable of the lot is Ajit Pawar himself. In his bid to match his uncle’s financial clout, he was quite reckless, especially in the irrigation department. Devendra Fadnavis had even threatened him with arrest and taunted him with the line from the film Sholay,  “chakki peesing and peesing“. In 2019, Ajit Pawar’s condition for joining hands with the BJP was the closure of inquiries against him in the irrigation scam. Self-preservation is key. As Sharad Pawar himself says, “Sar salamat toh pagdi hazaar“. (Stay alive and opportunities will come.)

The way the Shiv Sena and the NCP cadre have been broken shows that party workers cannot be blindly loyal, either to an idol or an ideology. What matters is political power and money power. Party workers feel they can bring development to their constituency only if they are in power. Politics of principles is passe. In any case, Sharad Pawar has made so many somersaults that he will not carry any conviction on this count. 

It’s not over though for Sharad Pawar. The Maratha strongman may have lost the party symbol but the question lingers, `Isn’t he bigger than the party symbol?’ Can he still pull a rabbit out of his hat? Observers of the Maharashtra political scene believe he can’t. However, it is too early to write his obit.

Pawar has not run out of options, besides he is a master of playing the waiting game. The 2024 Assembly as well as Lok Sabha poll results may not follow the script. Despite the Narendra Modi hype, there may be hiccups, as in the 2019 assembly polls where outgoing CM Fadnavis had predicted, “Me punha yein” (I will be back). The Maharashtra BJP which was confident of improving its 2014 tally of 122 assembly seats got just 105 seats. Fadnavis taunted Sharad Pawar saying he had no stomach for a fight; the NCP won 54 seats, 14 more than the last time. Even Congress improved its tally from 42 to 44.

One option before Sharad Pawar is to merge with the Congress. For the moment, it’s only pre-poll alliances. The Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) allies are close to firming up such an alliance, having finalised 34 Lok Sabha seats. However, the presidents of Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) and Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana (SSS), Prakash Ambedkar and Raju Shetti respectively, are playing hardball.

It remains to be seen whether the sympathy factor will work for Uddhav and Sharad Pawar. Just like Uddhav, Supriya Sule termed the EC judgment a “conspiracy against Maharashtra and Marathi people’’.

Then there’s the Maratha card. The Shinde-Fadnavis government has promised the dominant caste reservation but the story is still unfolding. If things go awry, no amount of money and muscle power will be able to influence inflamed passions.

The Congress and the NCP-Sharadchandra Pawar can also hope to bank on the 11.5 % Muslim population in Maharashtra. Unlike the cow belt, Maharashtra is not saffronised. Mandir-masjid politics does not pay here. The hoopla over Ayodhya and the bulldozer politics in Mira-Bhayandar and Bhendi Bazar will certainly have repercussions.

Socialists and communists back the secular parties in the state. At the recent centenary celebrations for former Union Minister and socialist leader late Madhu Dandvate, it was easy to see how many secular activists were working on the ground. The Y B Chavan centre was packed to capacity and everyone sat through the programme which lasted more than five hours.

The party cadre of the Sena and the NCP may have been broken. Still, no one knows whether the voter approves of MLAs being bought with crores of rupees, whether the voter agrees with the misuse of power at every level, and especially whether the Marathi voters are happy about the way industries/institutions are shifted from Mumbai to Ahmedabad.

If things don’t go as per the BJP’s plans, many deserters may return to Sharad Pawar who may cobble up yet another post-poll coalition in the state and at the Centre as well. 

Ajit Pawar may have got the clock symbol but his uncle is biding his time.

*The writer is an independent journalist based in Mumbai. His recently-published book, `The Fault With Reality: New experiments with truth’ (Notion Press) speaks for the silenced majority.