To be or not to be with BJP: How veteran Sharad Pawar navigates this matters in the run-up to 2024

Words reassuring to Gautam Adani — their friendship is no secret, nor is Pawar shy of praising corporate houses — but also seen by many in the BJP as words they wanted to say but could not. The day after, he clarified that he would go along with the JPC if the Opposition was set on it. This was typical Pawarism — multiple signals simultaneously. But it also highlighted the disarray in the Opposition ranks, a story now all too familiar though the Congress reacted with restraint.

Now comes another challenge. The Enforcement Directorate has filed a chargesheet against a company linked to Ajit Pawar and his wife Sunetra in the Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank (MSCP) scam. The ED has so far not named Ajit Pawar or his wife but no one’s guessing on what it does next. For a while, there’s a group in the NCP which wants the party to cast its lot with the BJP — and buy peace.

Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut has alleged that the BJP is working to split the NCP – like it did with Shiv Sena bringing down the Uddhav Thackeray government. Aaditya Thackeray has also claimed that before aligning with the BJP, Maharashtra CM Eknath Shinde had come crying that the BJP would arrest him unless he joined hands with it — this is denied by Shinde. Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena has repeatedly alleged that many MLAs left the parent party out of fear of the ED.

To what extent will Sharad Pawar, known to be devoted to his family and to his extended family, go to save Ajit Pawar? Even his senior colleagues admit it’s difficult to fathom.

What’s clear is that whatever Pawar decides to do will have implications for his party, and for the Maharashtra Vikas Agadi in next year’s elections to the Lok Sabha and the Assembly.

Pawar has been the MVA architect, its “guardian” angel — and ace trouble-shooter. When ally Shiv Sena was recently miffed by Rahul Gandhi’s critical comments about V D Savarkar, Pawar immediately stepped in to soothe its ruffled feathers, convincing Rahul Gandhi not to criticize Savarkar, an icon of many a “Marathi manoos.”

Pawar has played footsie with the BJP time to time to deal with political contradictions. If he decides now to support the BJP — in one form or another — it is the end of the kind of politics he has played so far. It is not as if he will be given PMship.

If he decides to push back, there will be consequences to follow—but he could still emerge as the frontrunner for the top job on the Opposition side, were such an opportunity to arise, remote though it seems.

Though 82, Pawar would still be acceptable to the largest number of regional players. And, possibly, even to the Nehru-Gandhi family who would rather have him than Modi. But he is a realist who knows that it is difficult to replace Modi as PM and would want his party, and the alliance it is part of, to rule Maharashtra for another term.

Pawar’s flurry of meetings in Delhi on Thursday, including the one with Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge and with Rahul Gandhi, was probably to assess “kaun kitne paani mein hai”— and how serious the Opposition parties are about banding together for 2024.

Is the Congress really serious about doing business with Aam Admi Party they love to hate? And vice versa — with AAP positioning itself to replace the Grand Old Party? Most important, is Rahul Gandhi willing not to push himself as the leader of the Opposition in 2024 and, instead, enable a unity as is being suggested by Congress leaders privately?

At the Thursday meeting, Rahul’s body language gave Pawar — and Kharge — their due. His words were measured, as they were at his meeting with Nitish Kumar and Tejaswi Yadav a day earlier — that the Opposition needed to evolve an alternative narrative.

Sharad Pawar is a man of many parts. The quintessential mass leader knows his state like the back of his hand and his workers by their names. As CM, he reached earthquake-hit Latur (in 1993) within two hours of the news, and camped in the ravaged town for three days, personally supervising rescue work. Few understand the system — and can pull the levers of power — as deftly as he does.

The photograph of him in Satara addressing a poll rally in pouring rain in 2019 defined and renewed his image: a patriarch with whom the Maharashtrians have strong emotional connect.

Today, this Prime Minister India did not get; arguably the best Agriculture Minister the country had; a 24x7x365 politician, Sharad Pawar faces yet another difficult decision at the tail end of his 55-year-long political career: how to navigate another minefield, to be or not to be with the BJP.

Aware that his next steps will reverberate beyond his family and Maharashtra.

(Neerja Chowdhury, Contributing Editor, The Indian Express, has covered the last 10 Lok Sabha elections)