Sharad Pawar is back, again; his NCP faction looks at highest strike rate in Maharashtra

One of the masterminds behind the INDIA bloc, the 83-year-old was up against the BJP might, and left with the NCP rump. But the old warhorse set to prove detractors wrong

Sharad Pawar NCP Lok Sabha election results Maharashtra

Despite his cordial relations with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Sharad Pawar not only gave a clarion call to fight against the BJP at the Centre and the state, but also set new narratives that often put his rivals on the backfoot. (File/ Express Photo by Pavan Khengre)

Written by: Shubhangi Khapre

5 min readMumbaiJun 4, 2024 02:19 PM IST First published on: Jun 4, 2024 at 02:18 PM IST

Left with a handful of leaders and legislators, his nephew usurping his party name and symbol, veteran politician Sharad Pawar was down last year. Eleven months later, the 83-year-old has bounced back. With his party, NCP (SP) — Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) — leading in eight of the 10 Lok Sabha seats it contested in Maharashtra, Pawar has displayed his resolve to take up challenges and seems to have given a new lease of life to his party by hitting the highest strike rate as per the initial counting trends.

The role of Pawar in this Lok Sabha election was being closely watched for more than two reasons. Firstly, Pawar Senior is considered the mastermind behind the initiative that saw the formation of the Opposition INDIA bloc at the pan-India level.

Despite his cordial relations with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Pawar not only gave a clarion call to fight against the BJP at the Centre and the state, but also set new narratives that often put his rivals on the backfoot.

For example, in the middle of the five-phase voting in Maharashtra’s 48 seats, Pawar in an interview to The Indian Express suggested a possible reshaping of Opposition politics after the 2024 elections, saying that regional parties will move closer or, in some cases, even merge with the Congress.

“In the next couple of years, several regional parties will associate more closely with the Congress. Or they may look at the option of merging with the Congress if they believe that is the best for their party,” he said.

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Asked whether that applied to his own party, he replied, “I don’t see any difference between the Congress and us… Ideologically, we belong to the Gandhi, Nehru line of thinking.”

Pawar’s statement forced the top BJP leadership to take note and respond. Both PM Modi and his Union Home Minister Amit Shah sharpened their attack on Pawar in their successive rallies in the state. In a blistering attack targeted at Pawar, Modi at a Pune rally urged voters to “punish him”. He even called Pawar Senior “bhatakti aatma” (a wandering soul).

The second reason to watch out for Pawar in this election was about his future and his party in Maharashtra, and by an extension at the Centre. But Pawar’s story is phoenix-like – rising from the ashes.

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In July 2023, his nephew Ajit Pawar parted ways and took along with him 41 MLAs and one MP to join the BJP-Shiv Sena (Shinde faction) government in the state.

The vertical split in the NCP, founded by him in 1999, was perhaps the biggest political challenge for the Maratha leader who has been playing a proactive role in national politics for the last six decades.

Unfazed by the split that was engineered by his own nephew with the BJP’s backing, Pawar pledged to rebuild the organisation from scratch. He took to aggressive field work, hopping from one constituency to another to retain his support base.

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Pawar also played the role of the key strategist in keeping the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) — the alliance of Congress, Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena faction and NCP (SP) — intact. He took the back seat by agreeing to contest in only 10 Lok Sabha seats. As against this, Shiv Sena (UBT) contested 21 seats and Congress 17. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections when Shiv Sena was a part of BJP-led NDA, the undivided NCP had won 4 seats and Congress one. The undivided Sena had then won 18 seats and BJP 23. Despite a split in Sena, Pawar conceded more seats to Thackeray and projected him as the main leader of the MVA.

If NCP(SP) succeeds in retaining the sizeable number of seats it has been leading, it would be equated to the Pawar factor. The party would claim the mandate was against the “tod phod” politics of the BJP.

With daughter Supriya Sule leading in the family bastion of Baramati, and the NCP, led by his nephew Ajit Pawar, leading in only one seat of Raigad, Pawar senior can now look forward to Assembly elections in Maharashtra, likely to be held later this year.