Were Stanley Kubrick’s classic cold war satire Dr. Strangelove to be set in Baramati, it may well be titled Mr. Pawar: or how I learned to stop worrying and love my nephew.
As the 83-year-old Sharad Pawar rattles sabres with his mercurial nephew, Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, for control of Baramati (which goes to polls on May 7) and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), the paterfamilias of the Pawar clan and Maharashtra’s politics faces the toughest contest of his life.
Yet this soap opera of a contest, which has Mr. Sharad Pawar’s daughter, Supriya Sule (the Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi’s candidate and incumbent Baramati MP) pitted against Mr. Ajit’s wife Sunetra Pawar (the ruling Mahayuti’s candidate), is leavened with high political comedy which has seen bitter foes turning into overnight friends across the six Assembly segments in the Baramati Lok Sabha.
On paper, the arithmetic seems to favour Mr. Ajit and the Mahayuti as his ‘palace revolution’ in July last year, which split the NCP founded by his uncle in 1999, has completely upset the political balance in Baramati.
As a result, Mr. Sharad Pawar (and Ms. Sule) today has no MLA from the NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) camp. Ms. Sule and her father are dependent on the goodwill of their MVA ally, the Congress, which holds the Bhor and Purandar segments.
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Khadakwasla, which has the largest concentration of voters (4.7 lakh) is firmly in the grip of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). So is the Daund Assembly segment, whose legislator is the BJP’s Rahul Kul.
His wife, Kanchan Kul, was the saffron party’s candidate in the 2019 general election. While Ms. Sule coasted to victory with a comfortable margin of more than 1.5 lakh votes, Ms. Kul performed creditably, garnering more than 40% of the vote share as opposed to Ms. Sule’s 52%.
Both Khadakwasla and Daund had voted against Ms. Sule (and the NCP) in the last election.
This leaves the other two Assembly segments - Baramati and neighbouring Indapur, both totally dominated by Mr. Ajit.
Last time, it was Mr. Ajit, as Ms. Sule’s “campaign manager” in the undivided NCP, who had ensured a lead of 1.25 lakh votes for his cousin from the key Baramati Assembly segment alone. (Mr. Ajit has been an MLA from Baramati a record seven-times since 1991).
This time around, Mr. Ajit, along with the BJP top brass and the NDA alliance, have thrown their full weight behind Ms. Suentra Pawar.
Ever since Mr. Sharad Pawar became an MLA from Baramati for the first time in 1967 (an MP from Baramati in 1984), the dominance of the Pawar clan has been overwhelming.
A key region in western Maharashtra, the politics of Baramati has revolved round influential sugar barons and political clans in this region.
Given the intense rivalry between the Pawar clan and other prominent political families here, shotgun marriages in the past few weeks have been the order of the day, with Mr. Ajit and the Mahayuti gaining considerable success in mending fences with old rivals.
Mr. Ajit reconciled with his formidable adversary - former Minister and Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena camp leader Vijay Shivtare from Purandar (which forms part of Baramati).
Mr. Shivtare, who until recently had vowed to overthrow the Pawar clan by entering the Baramati contest as the ‘third challenger’, has now pledged to give a lead of 50,000 votes from Purandar to Ms. Sunetra Pawar.
In return, Mr. Ajit has solemnly promised Mr. Shivtare that he would expedite all pending development works related to the Purandar-Saswad area.
Likewise, Mahayuti diplomacy has brought about rapprochement between Mr. Ajit and his bitter rival from Indapur, ex-Minister Harshawardhan Patil.
The Mahayuti has also managed to pacify and keep Rashtriya Samaj Paksha (RSP) leader Mahadev Jankar on their side, who was on the verge of joining Mr. Sharad Pawar’s camp.
It was Mr. Jankar, an influential Dhangar (shepherd) community leader, who gave Ms. Sule a scare in 2014 Baramati Lok Sabha election.
Ever the ace politician, Mr. Sharad Pawar has isolated Mr. Ajit from within the Pawar clan itself: Mr. Ajit’s elder brother, businessman Shrinivas Pawar and Mr. Ajit’s own nephew – Yugendra Pawar – are campaigning on Supriya Sule’s behalf. Pawar senior rubbed further salt on Mr. Ajits ‘filial wounds’ when he called his family (Supriya et al) as the “real Pawars” and Mr. Ajit Kumar’s family (Ms. Sunetra etc.) as the “Pawars who have come from outside”) – a stinging remark that drew tears from Ms. Sunetra’s eyes.
Both Mr. Ajit, CM Shinde and Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis have been insisting that the Baramati contest is a fight between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, and not between Mr. Sharad Pawar and his nephew, and certainly not between Ms. Supriya Sule and Ms. Sunetra.
Mr. Ajit has been stressing on how Central funds will flow directly to all parts of Baramati if the Mahayuti’s candidate is elected and how pending infrastructural projects long hanging fire will see the light of day.
In contrast, Ms. Sule brandishes her report card, and says she believes in her work so completely that even her critics would vote for her after reading it. She has attacked the BJP for causing a split within the family while mocking the saffron party for failing to field a candidate of its own.
Despite the Mahyuti’s loud campaigning, the enormous influence that Mr. Sharad Pawar wields over Baramati is still feared as the old man’s potent ‘X factor’ by his rivals and his nephew.
In Baramati, for the first time since Mr. Sharad Pawar became an MLA in 1967, a divided city has to choose between the rival candidates. The division begins from Katewadi, the ancestral village of the Pawar family.
According to observers, a defeat for Ms. Sunetra would pose a big question mark on Mr. Ajit’s political future in Mahayuti, given that he has already suffered a major embarrassment in 2019 when his eldest son Parth Pawar was routed in the Maval Lok Sabha seat in 2019.
If Supriya Sule loses, it would mean the twilight of Baramati’s idol – Mr. Sharad Pawar.
Either way, the last verse of this Homeric tussle between the Pawars has yet to be written.
