The woefully truncated Nationalist Congress Party (SP) led by the indefatigable Sharad Pawar managed to put up the best show in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections in Maharashtra, surpassing all expectations. As a key ally of the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), the NCP(SP) had fielded candidates in just ten seats with the new symbol of a Trumpeter’, in comparison to the Shiv Sena(UBT)’s 21 nominees and Congress’ 17 contestants. Maharashtra has 48 Lok Sabha seats. However, Pawar lived up to the old sobriquets pasted on him, like ‘Chanakya’ or ‘Machiavelli’ and trumped in eight of the ten seats, besides losing one seat (Satara) narrowly owing to a similar symbol allotted to another candidate there.
Overall, the MVA gave a spectacular showing, bagging 30 of the 48 seats, relegating the ruling MahaYuti allies to a single digit each — Shiv Sena (7), Bharatiya Janata Party (9), and Nationalist Congress Party (1). There is also an independent elected from Sangli who is likely to support the MVA, which could up its tally to 31 Lok Sabha seats in the state. Despite leading a broken party with a new name (NCP-SP), and unknown symbol (‘Trumpeter’) compared with his nephew and Deputy CM Ajit Pawar who walked away with the original name (NCP) and symbol (Clock), the smiling Sharad Pawar was unruffled.
Racing against time — the original party had vertically split in July 2023 — in just nine months, Sharad Pawar had the NCP(SP) baby ready for a devastating delivery vis-a-vis the NCP now with Ajit Pawar. In the five seats (including one given to an ally) it fought, the NCP won a solitary seat — Raigad, by state chief Sunil Tatkare — and the huge embarrassment was the loss of Sunetra Pawar, wife of Ajit Pawar in the Pawar clan’s den of Baramati, bagged by her ‘nanad’ Supriya Sule for the fourth time. The NCP(SP) got a handsome vote share (10.27 per cent) compared with the NCP’s measly (3.60 per cent).
Displaying the qualities of a wizened, experienced leader, Sharad Pawar appeared cool and unperturbed after the NCP he founded 25 years ago cracked into two pieces. At 83, the sprightly Sharad Pawar not only tended to the NCP(SP) home flock but also campaigned vigorously for the INDIA bloc candidates in the state and out of Maharashtra, contributing to many more victories. The NCP split generated immense sympathy to push the ruling MahaYuti into a corner at the hustings. Now, in the wake of the party’s drubbing in the Lok Sabha elections in Maharashtra, the worried NCP chief Ajit Pawar has his task cut out to find strategies ahead of the upcoming state Assembly elections slated for September-October. For now, his uncle Sharad Pawar is joyfully blowing the trumpet.
