‘Bhatakti Aatma’ (Sharad Pawar) stages a comeback, shows his nephew Ajit Pawar who’s the real NCP

PUNE: Sharad Pawar’s challengers will have to wait. The 83-year-old, who was ridiculed as a ‘bhatakti aatma’ by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the campaign, has just licked them again in the toughest match of his career. Going into the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, Pawar was fighting with one hand tied. His nephew Ajit had engineered a split in NCP, and walked away with the party’s name, symbol and leading lights.With Ajit joining the BJP-led Mahayuti grouping, each seat had become a contest between Pawar’s candidates and Prime Minister Modi.
Despite the headwinds, Pawar’s NCP (SP) is set to win 8 of the 10 Lok Sabha seats it contested as part of the MVA alliance with Congress and Shiv Sena (UBT). This will be Pawar’s best strike rate in an LS poll. His NCP’s wins span the Mumbai region (Bhiwandi), western and central Maharashtra (Baramati, Madha and Shirur), Vidarbha (Wardha) and north Maharashtra (Dindori and Ahmednagar). Pawar has managed to make inroads in regions where NCP’s support base was considered relatively weaker. In comparison, the rival NCP led by Ajit Pawar has won a lone seat in Raigad.
As a key member of INDIA bloc, the former Union minister and four-time chief minister was fighting the election simultaneously on different fronts, including in his backyard Baramati, where Ajit had challenged his supremacy by fielding his wife Sunetra against Pawar’s daughter Supriya Sule.
Many felt that the ageing Pawar would largely confine himself to Baramati and western Maharashtra to counter Ajit’s imme-diate challenge, but he surprised them with a busy tour. He attended over 50 rallies in over-40-degrees heat and pegged away at rebuilding the organisation that Ajit had split.
With veterans like Chhagan Bhujbal and Dilip Walse Patil choosing to go with his nephew, Pawar didn’t have easy picks either for the 10 seats his party contested. But he made up by poaching candidates from the rival NCP and BJP.
Pawar’s close associates say he enjoys nothing more than a tough challenge. What worked most for him was the sympathy generated by the split. Both Pawar and Uddhav Thackeray — MVA allies who were ‘dispossessed’ of party names and symbols — rode a wave this time even as their campaign focused on issues such as the rural economy and the jobs crisis, which resonated with voters.
Following NCP’s split, some seniors like Jayant Patil and Vandana Chavan in the organisation had stayed put with Pawar while most of the younger lot had gone with Ajit. For organizational heft, Pawar delegated charge to younger leaders, including grandnephew Rohit, who campaigned among first-time voters. Another grandnephew, Yugendra, held fort for Supriya in Baramati. These tactics paid off. Though a challenge came from within the family, Sharad Pawar managed to unite the rest of his clan behind him.
The 2024 Lok Sabha election was in some ways a repeat of the 2019 assembly polls when many leaders left NCP and the Opposition declared the Sharad Pawar era as over. But Pawar’s party won more than 50 seats. He also managed to split the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance to forge the MVA with Congress and Sena, which led the govt until 2022.