Ajit Pawar down, Supriya Sule up, Sharad Pawar the boss

In three days, the 82-year-old had shown why he is a survivor of over 50 years in politics: the Ajit Pawar potential rebellion now has an even bigger mountain to climb, the road to Sharad Pawar’s daughter Supriya Sule ascension is clearer, and naysayers have been shown – again – who is the boss in the NCP.

Having been outsmarted one too many times by his uncle and mentor, Ajit might find fewer NCP MLAs willing to bet on him in the coming days. The seniors in the party, long-time loyalists of Pawar, are anyway – to a person — more comfortable with Sule.

Since Pawar Senior is not a man easily given to emotions – rather the opposite – clearly he knew exactly how the script would play out when he made his surprise resignation announcement. An insider in the NCP said, “Pawar chose to put out everything in the public domain, to defuse growing talk of unrest within the NCP and of ugly differences between the party and his parivar. The Ajit Pawar versus Jayant Patil tussle is well-known, but the larger concern was Ajit Pawar’s ambition to take control of the organisation.”

At the press conference on Friday, Pawar Senior didn’t just emphasise that NCP leaders didn’t want him to leave, he pointedly mentioned that leaders of other parties like Rahul Gandhi and Sitaram Yechury had asked him to stay. That there was no parallel to him in the NCP was obvious.

So where does that leave Ajit, who incidentally was a notable absentee at the press conference? While he issued a statement later welcoming his uncle’s decision to withdraw his resignation and asserting that “the NCP is united”, could the junior have overreached himself once too often?

Clearly tired of waiting in the wings, Ajit has been working his way to the centre trying several tactics since the 2019 Assembly election results showed a window. What was different this time was persistent talk from his camp that he also had the needed MLA numbers with him.

A former NCP minister close to Pawar said, “His biggest concern is to keep the party united, and hence he will never hand over the leadership reins to Ajit, because he knows it will unsettle senior leaders.” According to the ex-minister, “These senior leaders who have closely worked with Pawar for three decades have always made Sule their rallying point to check Ajit.”

Ahead of 2024, when the Opposition is banking on Pawar to play a major role as a glue plus elder statesman, he needed to first have his own house in order, a senior observer pointed out.

As per the ex-minister, Sule could be pushed now as party president and even as Chief Minister should the NCP be in that position. She is also more agreeable to NCP allies Shiv Sena (UBT) and the Congress, unlike Ajit, whose dalliance with the BJP post-2019 results still weighs heavy on them.

This is quite a blow for Ajit as the NCP’s unsaid understanding all along has been that Sule is its Delhi face and, maybe, next national chief, but the state belonged firmly to the nephew.

In the recent season of political upheavals in Maharashtra, Ajit’s one “friend” is said to have been BJP leader and Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis. Publicly though, the BJP maintained it had nothing to do with the NCP goings-on. On Friday, Fadnavis said: “It is the internal matter of NCP. The script and players enacting the roles both belong to the NCP… As with any film, we are waiting for the climax, which is still awaited.”

The finale could play out when the organisational changes Pawar has promised are carried out. In the 2019 episode of this long-running opera, which was as full of dramatic U-turns, Ajit had overnight gone to Fadnavis’s side to be sworn in as Deputy CM and CM, respectively, before returning in no time to the NCP ranks as it became clear that he could not break the party, to help the BJP form the government.

The uncle, who may or may not have written that script too (the jury is out on that one), had accepted Ajit back. On Tuesday, when Pawar announced his resignation, Ajit was the one person who seemed unflustered, even susshing some NCP leaders and snubbing others who suggested that the veteran should stay. He was caught telling one partyman to shut up, and snatching the mic from another.

How many U-turns does it take before one hits the point of no return? Ajit will be wondering.