Sharad Pawar hits the road, but a formal NCP split is proving hardest for both factions

Sharad Pawar (right) is dealing with confusion over the status of his party, amid scattered reports of a few more of his followers were contemplating to switch to Ajit Pwar’s camp.

Last week, Sharad Pawar hit the road, notwithstanding the persisting confusion over the status of his party, the NCP; his indoor meetings with his nephew Ajit Pawar; and scattered but steady reports that a few more of his followers were contemplating to switch to Ajit’s camp.

Resuming his state-wide tour – he is scheduled to travel all over Maharashtra over the next few months – he entered Beed, a stronghold of Dhananjay Munde, who took oath as minister in what is now being remodelled as a Maha-Yuti government along with Ajit Pawar.

Battle Lines Drawn

Addressing the “Swabhiman Rally” organised by his party workers, a boisterous Pawar dropped enough hints to both, the BJP, and Ajit Pawar’s camp which has recently switched its allegiance to the BJP, that he was in no mood for any patch-up or open to doing any formal business with the BJP.

With neither camp willing to depart from their positions, the NCP as a party must therefore face the test of a real split in the days or months to come ahead of the 2024 elections, even as both sides tactically delay the bitter spectacle of a public fight over the party’s name and the mascot.

The resumption of Sharad Pawar’s tour of the state means battlelines are drawn.

That does not augur well for the Ajit Pawar camp: for one, his bargaining chip with the BJP falls considerably; two, it delays resolution of the rebel legislators’ anxiety. Evidently, while Ajit Pawar and the other NCP ministers are maintaining a low-profile, their own legislators are mounting pressure on them to force a patch-up with the uncle, lest they face an uncertain political future.

Rapprochement Impossible

But the NCP imbroglio does not bode well for the BJP either: For, the party can’t openly attack Pawar Sr at this stage, having kept a door ajar for him just in case he turns around at some point.

Beyond the party settings are the unsettling spectre: Remember this is not merely a split in the party, this is a split in the extended Maratha universe that transcends regions and pervades family relations and businesses – from real estate to sugar sector. The fallout will be unprecedented if the battle escalates into a war. Even the BJP would not go unhurt.

A deep source within the party told me last week that rapprochement is impossible. Sharad Pawar, his daughter Supriya, his grand-nephew Rohit (an MLA from Karjat Jamkhed constituency of Ahmednagar), and some very close supporters are and will be in the MVA bloc in Maharashtra and stay aligned with the INDIA bloc at the national level, whatever it takes.

Pawar has finalised his next few outings over the coming weeks – covering different regions of the state. The ongoing talks between the two camps are more to ensure the political split within the NCP does not lead to economic, cultural and social turmoil. Of all, the paramount concern is the deep inter-connected business interests primarily in western Maharashtra, but also beyond it.

But Split Not Formalised

The uncle’s hardened position binds Ajit and his faction into a tight spot. Without Sharad Pawar by his side, no one knows if the nephew is capable of pulling off electoral dividends and fulfil his supporters' aspirations and tackle the challenge his wily uncle would foist electorally on them.

It’s clear that the BJP voters haven’t taken Ajit’s entry into the Maha-Yuti kindly. There is no guarantee that there will be a safe vote transfer between the BJP, Ajit and Eknath Shinde camps.

So, unlike Uddhav Thackeray's approach towards the rebel faction led by Eknath Shinde, who eventually also won the claim over Shiv Sena mascot, Pawar Sr has left that question over who controls the party hanging, skirting any direct daily confrontation over the party apparatus.

Those cards he is holding close to his chest.

Both factions say the party has not split. That technicality won't need a test yet because the Shinde-Fadnavis-Ajit Pawar government does not need to demonstrate numbers on the floor of the house and neither will the MVA ask for a test at this stage. Simply because the more this confusion prevails, the more it hurts the Ajit camp with growing anxiety and the BJP, for it can’t take a calculated open position on anything concerning Sharad Pawar.

Pawar Sr’s Big Bets

With all this confusion in the NCP and by extension the polity in Maharashtra, the beginning of Pawar's sorties into the hinterland and heartland is significant to be tracked.

In Beed, he chose to give a platform to a young Vanjara leader, in a clear signal to the people that he would be the substitute to Dhananjay Munde in his scheme of things. Munde, the nephew of late Gopinath Munde and Pankaja's cousin, had switched with Ajit to become Maharashtra agriculture minister. “People know which button to press on when elections come,” he said, in a long combative speech attended by a gathering of his old supporters and young workers.

This is also to be seen in the context of Sharad Pawar's first major effort in at least two decades to return to Maharashtra with an engagement of this nature, since the mid-1990s when he shifted to Delhi and left Mumbai under the command of his second line. Now that this second line has ditched him, he is banking on the third line, a younger more combative ground force, which is not yet entrenched in any institutional businesses, but hungry to dislodge the second line.

Aside from his political stance of standing by the INDIA alliance, Pawar Sr's reading is that a strong anti-incumbency is brewing against Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His close aides say that Pawar Sr senses that not only is there anti-incumbency, there is also a Modi fatigue in a large section of the electorate.

Despite the dent Ajit caused him, Sharad Pawar still fancies a big new opportunity for himself, his own party, and that of an anti-BJP dispensation in the state.

Jaideep Hardikar is a Nagpur-based journalist, a core team member of the People's Archive of Rural India, and the author of "Ramrao - The story of India's farm crisis". Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.