© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Those who initially thought that the split in the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) was another “googly” by the hard-to-fathom Maratha leader Sharad Pawar are not so sure any more. The first googly was thrown by Pawar when he endorsed the midnight swearing-in of Ajit Pawar in 2019 as Deputy CM, who returned to his uncle’s side 80 hours later. Today, the spat between the senior Pawar and his nephew Ajit has become too ugly to have been pre-scripted.
The NCP split is less about Ajit Pawar, who has once again joined hands with the BJP and become the Deputy CM of Maharashtra, or even about CM Eknath Shinde whose breakaway Shiv Sena group has become highly insecure about its future. Or about Devendra Fadnavis, the one-time CM who supposedly facilitated the latest power shift but who is, ironically, reduced to being one of the two Deputy CMs.
The big story in the drama is how the 82-year-old veteran Sharad Pawar — a four-time CM of Maharashtra, former Defence Minister under P V Narasimha Rao and Agriculture Minister under Dr Manmohan Singh, and a master puppeteer who has engineered many a split and facilitated the formation of many a government — has been reduced today to being a victim.
The political switch affecting the prospects of “Saheb”, as Sharad Pawar is popularly known, will also have an impact on the entire Opposition. For it holds the seeds of the BJP’s plan for 2024: break vulnerable regional parties, rebuild alliances that had come apart, and refashion the almost defunct National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
It was mystifying that the Prime Minister should have mounted a no-holds-barred attack on the NCP in Bhopal, citing scam after scam in which NCP leaders were allegedly involved, only days before several of those very scam-accused leaders joined the BJP. If the NCP leaders were headed the BJP way, why did the PM go to town against their corrupt ways? The PM is hardly a “kuchha khiladi”. Were his words meant to send a “final signal” to Sharad Pawar, as a political observer put it, to cross over with his entire team? Pawar decided not to. But the PM’s words upped the heat on the others in the NCP, under the ED radar, to make their move, which they did.
Or, was it the Opposition’s conclave in Patna that determined the timing of the switch by Ajit Pawar, his idea being to undermine Sharad Pawar and, in doing so, weaken efforts to unite the Opposition, of which he could have been a “sutradhar”.
There is little doubt that the NCP split is a major setback for the Opposition — in a state with 48 Lok Sabha seats and the Maha Vikas Aghadi well placed for next year’s electoral battles for the Lok Sabha and the Assembly. Until only two weeks ago, people — whether it was a secretary in the government in Mumbai or a farmer in a village in Satara — would say, “If you hold elections today, the MVA has a better chance of winning.”
The buzz in Maharashtra in recent weeks was not if Ajit Pawar would cross over but when. Indeed, Sharad Pawar’s resignation as NCP chief in May, taking it back after the party rallied around him, was to pre-empt such a move by his nephew who has been facing ED pressure and has openly admitted that he wants to be CM. Sharad Pawar would also have known Praful Patel’s views, from the time that Modi came to power, that the NCP should align with the BJP. The possibility of his exit, along with Ajit Pawar, was not exactly a secret.
Did Sharad Pawar hope for a split in the NCP to clear the way for Supriya Sule? He would have surely known that appointing his daughter as the party’s working president (along with Praful Patel) and giving her charge of Maharashtra (over Ajit) was bound to provoke his nephew.
Did Pawar want to settle the succession battle in the party through a split — while he was still around to do damage control and “rebuild the party”, big or small, which would be led by her? Aware that the NCP’s influence is limited essentially to Western Maharashtra and Marathwada, its tally not crossing nine in the Lok Sabha and 71 in the Assembly since its formation in 1999, Sharad Pawar has already hit the road.
How much of this will resonate with the street is the open question. While it is true that more than half of India is below the age of 30 and looking for younger icons, this is also a country uncomfortable with not giving the elderly their due — and Ajit Pawar’s jibe urging his old uncle to make way for the young may not have gone down well in the NCP’s traditional bastions.
The sight of Sharad Pawar campaigning in the rain, having to be helped up a dais, undoubtedly got him sympathy and votes in 2019. Today, many in Western Maharashtra say they “love saheb”, words very different from the ones used for him even 10 years ago.
For all his faults, he is seen as the tallest leader in the state today. Will this cancer survivor, seen to be stabbed in the back, fighting his last electoral battle be able to repeat in 2024 what he did in 2019?
There is also the unanswered question: why did the highly pragmatic Pawar decide against aligning with the BJP to keep his party intact? He has played footsie with the BJP and had even offered, on his own, to support the BJP government in the state in 2014.
Is ideology the reason? Is it that towards the end of his public life, he doesn’t want his legacy questioned? Or, is he gravitating towards the Congress? Can an alignment with the Congress give Supriya Sule more of a stable perch? Can he merge his NCP in the Congress, for all the distrust that has existed between the two parties?
Though Rahul Gandhi called on Pawar to extend the Congress’s support to him, there are many in the Congress who advocate going solo in Maharashtra to take advantage of the recent shenanigans in the NCP and earlier in the Sena.
By breaking the Shiv Sena and the NCP, the BJP has shown its appetite for strengthening itself come what may. It is expected to turn its attention next to Bihar. Will it be able to make Nitish Kumar into another Sharad Pawar? There is a buzz that there is resentment in sections of the JD(U) over Nitish’s proclamation that RJD’s Tejashawi Yadav will be CM next time.
The stakes are high for the BJP as it cannot risk its 2019 tally coming down by 60-70 seats in 2024. “There are many ways of taking out ghee from a dabba,” a BJP minister in Maharashtra told a journalist. “With a spoon. But if that is not possible, aap ungli terhi karke nikalte ho (you make your finger crooked, and take it out). If that also does not work, you put heat under the box, hoping to melt the ghee. But if even that does not work, you make a hole in the bottom of the dabba and it will come out on its own.”
“Don’t forget, yeh Vinoba (Bhave) ka ashram nahin hai, yeh aaj ki rajneeti hai.”
(Neerja Chowdhury, Contributing Editor, The Indian Express, has covered the last 10 Lok Sabha elections)
