Winning 41 out of 58 seats his party contested, Nationalist Congress Party chief Ajit Pawar has emerged as one of the biggest winners in the Maharashtra Assembly elections.
Not too long ago, during the Lok Sabha elections, Ajit Pawar's party managed to win just one seat out of the four it contested, as opposed to NCP Sharad Pawar which won eight out of 10.
Many of Ajit Pawar's critics began writing his obituary and claiming that the NCP can't exist without Sharad Pawar.
However, Ajit Pawar has proven all the critics wrong. At the time of writing the story, the party had won or was leading on 71 percent of the seats it contested.
How did this turnaround come about, that too in just about five months?
Central to the turnaround in Ajit Pawar's fortunes was the political consultancy handling his campaign - DesignBoxed, which has till now worked mostly with senior Congress leaders like DK Shivakumar, Ashok Gehlot, TS Singh Deo and a few Congress state units.
The company's co-founder Naresh Arora had stationed himself in Maharashtra for the past four months and managed every aspect of Ajit Pawar's campaign. There are broadly six aspects to their intervention.
1. Localised Campaign
Following the Lok Sabha election success for the Maha Vikas Aghadi, the sentiment seemed to be in their favour. The NCP's strategists decided to localise the election as much as possible by focusing on the work done by local leaders.
Despite its below par performance at the Lok Sabha level, Ajit Pawar's NCP had the advantage of having good leaders at the Assembly constituency level, such as Chhaggan Bhujbal in Yevla, Indranil Naik in Pusad, Hasan Mushrif in Kagal, Narhari Zirwal in Dindori, Manikrao Kokate in Sinnar to name a few. The NCPSP didn't have such a strong line-up and had to import leaders from other parties.
"One of Ajit Pawar's strongest points is that he has always allowed local leaders to grow and become brands in their own right. This worked to the party's advantage," Arora said.
Taking this approach forward, the team pushed for constituency-specific manifestoes that helped showcase the work done by MLAs and also provide a vision of what they plan to do.
Making the campaign localised helped the NCP neutralise any state-wide anti-incumbency and also overcome the impact of caste divisions.
2. Change in Ajit Pawar's Image
"It is well known that Ajit Pawar is an excellent administrator. But our challenge was to now make him a vote-getter," Arora disclosed.
For the party and its strategists, this meant much more public interactions and media exposure than Ajit Pawar would do usually.
"He is an excellent communicator and has good oratory in Marathi. These aspects hadn't gotten prominence for all these years because he was seen as the administrator and Sharad Pawar was the main vote getter," said Arora.
The firm organised a Jan Sammaan Yatra as a massive public outreach programme in July-August, less than two months after the Lok Sabha defeat. The Yatra strengthened the NCP organisation greatly and helped restore confidence in the party.
This is similar to the Yatra Designboxed helped organise for DK Shivakumar in the run-up to the Karnataka Assembly elections.
3. Pink Theme, Focus on Women
There was also a clear effort to have visual consistency in the NCP's promotional material, whether on the ground or in the media and social media. The strategists chose a pink theme for Pawar's campaign - from the colour on creatives on social media to the stage at rallies, accessories given to party supporters and even the jackets and turbans worn by Ajit Pawar.
The idea was to use a colour that stands out and appeals, in particular, to women voters. Culturally too, pink is one of the traditional colours for turbans in Maharashtra.
This was part of an exercise to portray a softer, more accessible image for Ajit Pawar and project him as a "brother" for the women in the state.
This also came on the heels of the Laadki Bahin scheme of the state government, that proved to be a political game-changer. Each of the alliance partners have claimed that Ladki Bahin as their idea. Ajit Pawar, being the finance minister, had disbursed funds for it.
4. No Attacks on Sharad Pawar
Surveys conducted by DesignBoxed revealed that there is a significant degree of sympathy for Sharad Pawar. Therefore, the strategy was to ensure that no personal attacks are made either by Ajit Pawar or any other NCP leader against Sharad Pawar. The policy was also followed to some extent towards Uddhav Thackeray and Manoj Jarange Patil.
Basically, anything that took the attention away from governance issues and welfare measures was avoided.
5. Differentiate NCP, While Maintaining Alliance Dharma
NCP was in a peculiar position, being a secular party in a pro-Hindutva alliance. The hostility of sections of the BJP and Shiv Sena towards Ajit Pawar was also well known.
The other challenge was that the NCP has a sizable base among Muslims and it ran the risk of alienating them due to the alliance with BJP-Sena.
"Our priority was to ensure that NCP has its individual identity, while maintaining the coalition Dharma," Arora said, citing the contrarian stand taken by Ajit Pawar on the Waqf Bill and the Vishalgarh Fort communal standoff.
Towards the end of the election campaign, when the BJP began raising the "Batenge toh Katenge" slogan, Ajit Pawar called it "unnecessary".
6. Scaling Up
According to Arora, key to the NCP's success was the scale at which they took their message to the voters. He says that their campaign reached 18 lakh households, that too in just the 58 constituencies they were contesting. For a non-cadre based party, this was no small achievement.
Sources say, this is where the Sharad Pawar NCP underestimated the Ajit Pawar NCP. The former relied greatly on political management and caste equations rather than ensuring that their message reaches maximum people.
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