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Parallel Pawar shows: My turn, says nephew; uncle lashes back
Both factions of the NCP scrambled to corral legislators on its side and held almost parallel shows of strength in Mumbai, mobilising thousands of workers from their strongholds to make a point
Mumbai Maharashtra deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar on Wednesday sharply criticised his uncle Sharad Pawar just days after rebelling against him, and asked the senior leader to retire, but the public announcement of his desire to be the chief minister appeared to spark unease in his new ally Shiv Sena and drew condemnation from the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) patriarch.
Both factions of the NCP scrambled to corral legislators on its side and held almost parallel shows of strength in Mumbai, mobilising thousands of workers from their strongholds to make a point.
Ajit Pawar claimed that he enjoyed the support of 40 of the NCP’s 53 legislators but his meeting was attended by 32 – short of the benchmark required to evade the anti-defection law. His hour-long speech on Wednesday afternoon sealed the split in the NCP, founded 24 years ago.
His uncle and political mentor Sharad Pawar’s meeting was a more emotional spectacle where the 82-year-old leader was hailed as a lion who would rebuild the party. It was attended by 15 lawmakers.
The allegiances of six members of legislative assembly (MLAs) remained unclear – a crucial factor in the snowballing fight for control of the party, its name and poll symbol. That battle gained momentum on Wednesday as Ajit Pawar’s camp moved the Election Commission of India (ECI), demanding the use of the NCP name and symbol, an analogue alarm clock drawn on the Indian flag.
By evening, Ajit Pawar — who also removed his uncle as NCP president and anointed himself as the new party chief — had sequestered his lawmakers at Taj Land’s End Hotel in Bandra; Sharad Pawar called a meeting of the party’s national executive in Delhi on Thursday.
The crisis in the NCP began on Sunday when Ajit Pawar and eight other NCP lawmakers joined hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and took oath as ministers in the Maharashtra government.
The rebellion set off a string of tit-for-tat disqualifications and appointments in both camps and representations to ECI in what was an almost play-by-play repeat of a split last year in the Shiv Sena that brought down the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government.
The meetings of the two camps on Wednesday – Ajit Pawar at the Mumbai Education Trust (MET) in Bandra and Sharad Pawar at the Yashwantrao Chavan centre at Nariman Point, just 18km apart – were charged affairs, with workers chanting slogans and large hoardings in both places using the party’s name and symbol.
Ajit Pawar drew first blood. In a sharp attack on his uncle that abandoned his more conciliatory approach over the past three days, Ajit Pawar reminded his 82-year-old uncle that it was time for him to retire from active politics.
“Are you ever going to retire?” asked Ajit of his uncle. “Public servants retire at 58 or 60, in a party like the BJP they retire at 75, you are 83, when are you going to stop?” he hollered from the dais.
In attacking Sharad Pawar publicly for the first time, Ajit Pawar not only announced his emergence from his uncle’s shadow but also his unalloyed allegiance to Narendra Modi’s leadership
“I have set the record of becoming the deputy chief minister of the state five times, but nothing has moved beyond that. I state here frankly that even I wish to lead the state and accomplish what I want to for the state,” he said, expressing his desire to chief minister.
He also accused Sharad Pawar of toying with the idea of backing the BJP but making him the scapegoat. His uncle, Ajit Pawar said, had planned to join hands with the BJP in 2014, 2017, 2019, and even as recently as 2022 after the MVA government was toppled in June last year. He then questioned why his move was objected to by Pawar when he himself had tried to do so on multiple occasions.
Around 5,000 people were present at MET, with several party workers spilling onto the roads.
Hours later, the NCP patriarch hit back. Surrounded by loyalists and his daughter, party working president Supriya Sule, Sharad Pawar refrained from attacking his nephew by name. “Some people spoke about me but at their function they had put my picture behind them on stage. They know they would need my name.”
He also said that the party name and symbol of the clock would remain in his control. While Sharad Pawar did not specifically refer to Ajit’s claim to him talking to the BJP in the past, he did say that while the Sena’s Hindutva was the Hindutva of the masses, the BJP’s Hindutva was the domain of “Manuwadis” and that it was “vicious.”
“Those who join hands with the BJP and share power get politically destroyed eventually. To steadily weaken its political allies is the BJP’s policy. There are enough examples of this in other states,” the Rajya Sabha MP said.
Recalling his ties with the grassroots when he set up the NCP in 1999 after quitting the Congress, he added, “Today we may not be in power, but we are in people’s hearts.” The NCP chief warned the Ajit Pawar faction that every ally of the BJP eventually faced “political destruction” and they, too, would meet the same fate.
Sharad Pawar objected to the Ajit Pawar faction using his photograph on their banners.
“If they have gone there, why are they using my photo? I will not let our symbol and party name fall into their hands,” he said.
Sule also criticised Ajit Pawar. “Disrespect us, but not our father (Sharad Pawar). This fight is against the BJP…. the original NCP is with Sharad Pawar and the original symbol is with us,” she added.
Ajit shared the dais with cabinet minister Chhagan Bhujbal, senior NCP and MPs Praful Patel and Sunil Tatkare.
The churn in Maharashtra has also sparked consternation in the Shiv Sena, which broke away from Uddhav Thackeray last year and tied up with the BJP to form a coalition government.
Away from the roller coaster of the NCP, a third person — all too familiar with the mechanics of such a revolt — went into a huddle with his own lawmakers. On Wednesday, Maharashtra chief minister Eknath Shinde skipped a function attended by President Droupadi Murmu at Gadchiroli, and missed all his other official functions to spend the entire day parleying with party colleagues.
After Ajit Pawar’s induction, many of his party leaders have openly expressed their reservations about the move, pointing out that they had split in the first place because they felt that Ajit Pawar, when he was deputy chief minister in the MVA government, had tried to undermine the Sena’s interests.
In fact, some of them went to the extent of saying that they would rather return to Uddhav’s fold if things continued in this vein. The Shiv Sena (UBT) rejected such overtures. “We have no sympathy for these people, there is no talk in the party of taking them back,” said Member of Parliament from south Mumbai, Arvind Sawant.
On Tuesday, a number of Sena lawmakers had expressed dismay that the BJP went ahead with the induction of Pawar and his loyalists despite the coalition having a stable majority.
Meanwhile, amid rumours of Shinde’s imminent ouster, state BJP president Chandrakant Bawankule said, “Shinde will remain the chief minister of the state till 2024.”
