Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) President Sharad Pawar on May 2 announced that he would step down as president of the NCP and he will not be contesting elections in the future.
“I have three years’ tenure remaining in Rajya Sabha. I will not contest elections hereafter,” Sharad Pawar, who founded the NCP in 1999 after separating himself from Indian National Congress, said at the launch of the second edition of his autobiography, named ‘Lok Maze Sangati’. He said that he started his political career on May 1, 1960.
“After this prolonged political career, one should think about stopping somewhere. One should not be greedy,” he added.
Pawar suggested that a committee comprising senior NCP leaders be formed to decide the future course of action. “The committee will include, Praful Patel, Supriya Sule, Jayant Patil, Chhagan Bhujabl, Sunil Tatkare, P C Chacko, Narhari Zirwal, Ajit Pawar, Dilip walse-Patil, Anil Deshmukh, Rajesh Tope, Jitendra Awhad, Dhananjay Munde, Jaydev Gaikwad, Hasan Mushrif, and chiefs of party frontal cells,” Sharad Pawar said.
Following his announcement, many NCP leaders and workers chanted slogans demanding NCP supremo to reverse his decision.
Ajit Pawar meanwhile said that while his uncle thought the party needed new leadership, the new leader will continue to work “under the guidance of Sharad Pawar”.
“I just spoke to Kaki (wife of Sharad Pawar). She told me that he will not change his decision…Ultimately, new president will work under guidance of Sharad Pawar,” Ajit Pawar told NCP leaders.
“Let’s not be emotional. We all flourished under Pawar saheb and what is the use of repeating it again and again. Whoever be the new president, will work under Saheb. Why are you so worried about new president? This was to happen someday.”
NCP leader and former Union Minister Praful Patel said the announcement was shocking, and party leaders had requested him with “folded hands” to change his decision.
Among others, Jayant Patil broke down.
“There is no question of we accepting your decision today. You have always worked for every section of the society. It is time that Opposition unity must be formed at the centre,” NCP MLA Dilip Walse-Patil said.
Often in the past, Sharad Pawar’s friends and foes used to say that the Maratha strongman nursed a never-ending dream to be Prime Minister.
The closest to the position he came to realising his dream in 1991 after the Congress emerged as the single largest party in the wake of a post-Rajv Gandhi assassination sympathy wave. Congress returned an overwhelming about two dozen MPs from his State, but the party decided to settle for a near-retired P V Narasimha Rao, and Sharad Pawar had to settle down as his Defence Minister.
Acidly, P V Narasimha Rao later shunted him back to the Mantralaya in Mumbai, elevating him again as the Chief Minister.
But the prospect of that near possibility never died down, and ever since, all his political moves only strengthened one fact that the man still nurtured the dream of ruling India.
Such lofty goals, notwithstanding the bitter that his fledgling NCP, a splinter group of Sonia Gandhi’s outfit, had a parliamentary strength in modest single digits.
In fact, his walking out of Congress along with equally ambitious P A Sangma and a practically baseless Tariq Anwar forming the famous troika of 1999 was only a manifestation of that ambition. Even Late Chandrashekhar, former PM, used to speak on that line and also joked about Sharad Pawar often going soft on Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Even lately, Sharad Pawar surprised many when he took a defiant line vis-a-vis business tycoon Gautam Adani.
Born on December 12, 1940, Sharadchandra Govind Rao Pawar became the Chief Minister for the first time in 1978 at the young age of 38 – by the standard of Indian politics.
Well, he achieved that milestone by toppling the Congress Government of Vasantdada Patil, split the party, and formed a Government in coalition with the then Janata Party under the banner of the Progressive Democratic Front.
Paradoxically, the man who entered the State assembly for the first time in 1967 from Baramati, which had become his pocket borough in the decades after that, is also known for frequent changes of loyalties. His vivid untrustworthiness and abandoning the mentor Yashwantrao Chavan to win power will probably continue to haunt him and the oldtimers of Maharashtra politics.
Creditably, Sharad Pawar has put a one-time little-known sleepy hamlet Baramati on Maharashtra’s and in later stage, the country’s political map. His victory from the constituency used to be a foregone conclusion though his election campaigning was often restricted to only one public meeting on the last day.
The water management scheme launched by Sharad Pawar back in 1970 ensures even today that the region is not affected when the rest of the State is suffering from a drought.
It’s sheer his hard work for the constituency that he could even win in 1984 polls braving the tidal pro-Congress wave of sympathy for the late Indira Gandhi when even other stalwarts like Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the late H N Bahuguna were humbled.
It talks of his commitment to Baramati that despite being in the backyards of the Pune district, today it’s also known for its agri products like sugarcane, grapes and cotton.
And so much that even politics in the region has now got interlinked to terminologies like sugar lobby, cotton growers etc.
It’s these factors; observers say that weighed in his mind when he bargained tough for Agriculture Ministry in Manmohan Singh Government in 2004 and 2009.
But having said this, western Maharashtra also remains his nemesis, the man who single-handed demolished the former president of the Board of Cricket Control of India (BCCI), Jagmohan Dalmiya, politically has not been able to create a political bastion beyond western Maharashtra.
Sharad Pawar gave the knockout punch of life to the hitherto undisputed king of Indian cricket, Dalmiya. On November 29, 2005, heralding sweeping winds of change in BCCI, Sharad Pawar, then chief of Maharashtra cricket association, outwitted Dalmiya’s rubber stamp candidate Ranbir Singh Mahendra in keenly contested battle of votes by 20 against 11.
Prior to that, of course, in 2004, Sharad Pawar had lost the prestigious battle to Ranbir Singh Mahendra by 15-16 votes, with Jagmohan Dalmiya as the outgoing president exercising the casting vote in Mahendra’s favour.
Sharad Pawar cried foul play and said tongue-in-cheek: “I lost in a game where the umpire himself delivered a no ball against me. I would have got a clean majority if Maharashtra Cricket Association representative D C Agashe was allowed to vote.”
Sharad Pawar has been courting controversies both in cricket and politics. Among those, he has also been involved, most famously in the Enron power project fiasco.
It was his Government in Maharashtra that cleared the Enron project in 1993. Among the cricket controversies will be the fact under his president-ship of the cricket board, India ended rather poorly in the 2007 world cup.
Needless to add, while the Australian coach Greg Chappel was eased out, captain Rahul Dravid said he would also share his part of the responsibility, but the controversy did spark off why Sharad Pawar, who presided over the BCCI during this turbulent period, seems to harbour belief that he need not have to share any of the blame.
In the political context, Sharad Pawar is also known to be a great talent spotter and behind the door, especially in Maharashtra. On being transferred to the post of Mumbai Police Commissioner, P S Pasricha during the height of the Telgi stamp scam in 2004, said he “had the blessings” of Chief Minister, Home Mnister and of course, Sharad Pawar.
Sharad Pawar was nobody in the State Government then.
On his talent-spotting ability, Sharad Pawar’s admirers recall that it was he who suggested a political career to Sub-Inspector Sushilkumar Shinde way back in 1973. Shinde later became State’s Chief Minister, Governor in Andhra Pradesh and the Power and Home Minister under Manmohan Singh.
Sharad Pawar is also said to have roped in and convince Chhagan Bhujbal to quit the Shiv Sena and join the Congress in December 1990, giving Sena leader Bal Thackeray probably the first taste of desertions.
Chhagan Bhujbal later became deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra and turned a hardliner anti-Thackeray.
But skeptics often say what is attributed to Sharad Pawar could be a simple myth as many believe those who contribute to this myth also have rational motives of repaying his favour they get generously one way or the other.
