Baramati146;s king can146;t play kingmaker

For Sharad Pawar, the moment of personal triumph was tinged by a deeper loss. The man who might have been a kingmaker, has had to settle for...

For Sharad Pawar, the moment of personal triumph was tinged by a deeper loss. The man who might have been a kingmaker, has had to settle for the satisfaction of winning Baramati by a margin of over four lakh votes even that isn8217;t a record.

With his party relegated to fourth place in the state8217;s Lok Sabha tally, Pawar will have to be content with steamrolling one-time close aide from the cooperative sector and BJP rival Prithviraj Jachak by a margin of 4,22,798 votes to enter the Lok Sabha a sixth time.

Trailing behind Congress 13, BJP 13 and Shiv Sena 12, NCP8217;s score of nine seats has undermined Pawar8217;s ambitions of playing kingmaker in Delhi.

Throughout the campaign, Pawar had insisted that Maharashtra would play a 8216;8216;decisive role8217;8217; in determining who would be the next PM. But all those calculations have been upset by reversals faced in Vidarbha and Marathwada.

Many in NCP were counting on him to play a bigger role in a scenario that projected a tally of 200-210 seats for Congress. 8216;8216;In such a scenario, Pawarsaheb would have played a key role in the formation of a coalition government. In exchange, he would have bargained for a plum post like deputy PM,8217;8217; said a key NCP functionary.

Finishing on equal terms with the BJP-Sena alliance in Maharashtra means Pawar will not be in a position to dictate terms at the Centre. Also, he will have to stomach the prospect of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi 8212; whose foreign origin spurred him to walk out and form the NCP 8212; becoming the next PM.

Pawar has publicly taken an accommodating position. 8216;8216;Need of the hour is a stable government,8217;8217; he said at his South Mumbai residence. NCP will support the Congress-led government, but whether or not it joins the government will be known in a day or two, he said. Pawar is likely to meet Sonia on Saturday while the party executive will meet on May 15 to chalk out further strategies.

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Asked if his bargaining power had declined with the arithmetic being in favour of the Congress, he shot back,8216;8216;Where is the question of bargaining when we have decided to go with Congress?8217;8217; And on the question of accepting Sonia as PM, he made it clear that the decision could not be influenced by him: 8216;8216;It is for the Congress to decide.8217;8217;

Pawar instead chose to dwell on the factors that resulted in his party8217;s tally remaining a single digit. The BSP and SP came in for criticism for their role, which he said 8216;8216;was not favourable to the alliance.8217;8217;

8216;8216;The Congress-NCP alliance was trailing in Vidarbha and Marathwada and preliminary analysis showed the BSP has impacted our performance,8217;8217; Pawar said.