When it comes to Sharad Pawar, nothing is done, until it is done and dusted, locked up in a box forever to be on the safer and surer side as far as his opponents go. For he is the master of all Machiavellis of the world and his moves on the Indian political chessboard could defeat every last one of our very own Chanakyas.
So, when he resigned from the post of president of his own party, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in the morning, and rather reluctantly agreed to reconsider the decision by evening, it was clear that once again he had put everyone who thought he was past his prime and must step aside, in their places. In fact, not to mince words about it, he put his nephew Ajit Pawar, the biggest rebel in the party and family, firmly in his place.
Ajit Pawar — a Rebel in Perpetuity
Ajit has been chafing at the bit for a long time now, restless at the fact that he continues to be subordinate to his uncle even 30 years after marking time as his understudy. In all this time, Pawar has failed to declare him as his political heir. On the contrary, he has added more competition to Ajit not just from others in the party but also from within the family, the latest, apart from his daughter Supriya Sule, being his great nephew Rohit Pawar.
While Pawar Sr contained the conflict between his son and daughter by keeping them apart in the assembly and Lok Sabha respectively, Rohit is now playing on the same turf as Ajit is and, by most reports, proving a better understudy to his great uncle than any of his cousins.
Barely three days back, Ajit, mentioning no names, had expressed displeasure by stating obliquely that sometimes it was advisable for elders to step aside and make way for a younger generation— and by that, he did not mean Rohit Pawar.
Ajit has been a rebel in perpetuity for at least a decade now, the first instance being when he was deputy chief minister in the Prithviraj Chavan government and his attempt at breaking away, left him stranded on the other side of government and power while none of his supporters broke ranks or stood by his side. He soon returned to the government.
He rebelled again in 2014 just before the Assembly elections but that rebellion was papered over by the necessity of the polls. The biggest instance was in 2019 when he had had himself sworn in as deputy chief minister along with Devendra Fadnavis as chief minister— but then the handful of MLAs present at his swearing-in soon hurried back to Sharad Pawar’s side when they realised the move did not have the latter’s blessing. Ajit was left with no choice but to slink back into the party again.
Sharad Pawar’s Triumph
And that is where Ajit loses out every time to his uncle. He may have many loyalists within his uncle’s party but even they recognise that none of them can win an election without the senior Pawar’s blessing. Pawar continues to be the singular vote catcher, not just for the NCP but also the Congress.
This was very obvious in the instant response Sharad Pawar got to his resignation within seconds, NCP men present on the occasion had thrown themselves at his feet, youth across the districts had resigned from the party and their posts and the NCP stood in danger of sinking into oblivion without Sharad Pawar. Or at the least break into two factions— those with Ajit and those not.
But Sharad Pawar’s triumph over his recalcitrant nephew was that Ajit would have had to work for days with a series of lures or threats to rally support to himself. His uncle did it within seconds with just the expression of a desire to resign. The old sanyas and sacrifice emotion was in full play here.
Sharad Pawar’s triumph was greater than just regaining the upper hand over rebels within his own party and family. There is only one thread that binds the Maha Vikas Aghadi(MVA) together— and that is Sharad Pawar. While the Shiv Sena (UBT) leaders are already eating out of his hands, the NCP supremo was always troubled by local Congress leaders who felt they owed the NCP chief nothing.
But his resignation gave them a fright and there were appeals to him to withdraw his resignation or at least, hold it in abeyance until the next elections. For whatever their angst against Sharad Pawar, even these Congress leaders know they cannot hope to win 2024, Lok Sabha or Assembly, without Pawar’s active campaigning and that they, too, have no future without Sharad Pawar.
The Rural Maharashtra Factor
Pawar has, thus, sealed his place even within the opposition, for nationally, too, there is no other leader as networked as him who other political leaders would listen to with respect. So a crisis within his family has perhaps had a salutary effect on the chances of Opposition unity with respect to 2024, both in the state and nationally.
But the short political earthquake should also be seen as a diversionary tactic against the bigger enemy, the BJP, which has been of late putting the Pawar family and many NCP leaders under the scanner of central agencies. Some of these leaders, apart from his nephew, were of the view that the party must ally with the BJP to escape retribution for their past sins but Pawar was not quite amenable.
That is because the experiment of politically flirting with Narendra Modi and the BJP between 2014 and 2019 had informed Pawar that his core voters were the farmers and they were increasingly disillusioned by the ruling party. The NCP had been losing out to both the Congress and the Shiv Sena apart, of course, from the BJP, at local self-government elections across the districts even before the formation of the MVA in 2019.
The results of the elections to market committees across the state on Sunday have once again brought home the fact that the rural mood, at least in Maharashtra, is against the BJP. For, while the MVA won 81 out of the 147 market committees, the BJP and the Eknath Shinde faction of the Shiv Sena could win only 42, despite throwing everything at these polls from their position of power.
Sharad Pawar — the Ringmaster
Under the circumstances, the NCP can hardly afford to ally with the BJP. Even if a faction breaks away from Ajit to go with the BJP, they cannot be sure they could win under their own steam. The BJP, too, is clear they want no allies who cannot bring at least half a dozen Lok Sabha seats to their table and this is, increasingly, one reason for their disillusionment with Eknath Shinde who seems to be losing out to former chief minister Uddhav Thackeray in the popularity stakes following every rally and public meeting by the latter.
The NCP has a winning combination with themselves in the lead and is thus unlikely to jeopardise what could be perhaps their last bid to strike for the office of the chief minister during the next elections in 2024. However, this crucial fact needed to be brought home to Ajit and his supporters and Sharad Pawar has done it with a single stroke.
There will be the inevitable drama of his adamance and then of his melting in the face of his supporters’ pleas, also to save the lives of those who have threatened self-immolation if he quits. It is all par for the course when it comes to Sharad Pawar. He has sealed his own leadership of not just his own party but also the MVA and perhaps a national unity, at least until 2024 wherein again he stands his last chance of leading a coalition government at the Centre. Like his nephew desperately wants to be chief minister, so does the uncle's desire to be the prime minister.
Sharad Pawar has proved to be the true ringmaster of the present-day Indian political circus — again.
(Sujata Anandan is the Consulting Editor of National Herald, Mumbai. She tweets @sujataanandan. This is a an opinion piece, and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
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