NCP chief Pawar quits, then rethinks decision

Amid swirling rumours about a section of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leaders breaking away to ally with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Maharashtra, the party’s chief and one of India’s tallest and most senior political leaders, Sharad Pawar, 82, on Tuesday announced he was stepping down, but with pressure mounting from colleagues and supporters to stay on, said he would take two to three days to reconsider his decision.

Pawar’s shock announcement, made at the Mumbai launch of his autobiography Lok Mazhe Sangati, left his party reeling, with many senior leaders breaking down while yet others clambering onto the dais entreating him not to quit. For over two hours, they would not let Pawar leave the stage.

Such was the pressure mounted on him through the day that he finally asked for another two to three days to consider his decision “more deeply”. This was conveyed to the media by Ajit Pawar, the man widely believed to have prompted his uncle’s drastic move in the first place. Ajit Pawar also used the occasion to request NCP MLAs and office-bearers to stop bombarding his uncle with their own resignations.

But there was another theory as well. That Sharad Pawar, widely known for his Machiavellian thinking, had gone public with his intent to quit to simply display the command he still exerts over the party and to gather the faithful. Tuesday’s move, subscribers to this theory claimed, was but an opening gambit in the long game to follow.

“After such a long career, a person should also think of stopping at some point,” Sharad Pawar told over 600 party men gathered at the YB Chavan auditorium in Mumbai on Tuesday morning. He ruminated over his long and illustrious career before going on to clarify that he was stepping away from party leadership but not public life. “Constant travel has become an integral part of my life. I will continue to attend public events and meetings. Whether I am in Pune, Mumbai, Baramati, Delhi or any other part of India, I will be available to all of you as usual. I will continue to work round the clock to solve people’s problems.” But it was time, he added, “for a new generation to guide the party and the direction it intends to take”. He then announced the setting up of a committee which included leaders loyal to Ajit Pawar, which would decide who the next NCP president should be.

In the last few weeks, the NCP has been beset with internal strife and speculation that some MLAs were deserting the party along with a restive Ajit Pawar to align with the BJP in Maharashtra. On Tuesday, Ajit Pawar was the only prominent leader who supported Pawar’s decision to step down. “If he is not the president, it does not mean he is not in the party. He is looking to create new leadership... The new party chief will work under saheb’s leadership,” said Ajit Pawar, who only last week took a dig at Sharad Pawar’s advancing years, saying that some leaders step away when they get old.

Sharad Pawar set up the NCP along with Tariq Anwar and PA Sangma in 1999, following a bitter split with the Indian National Congress, and has since been the party’s president. The NCP, which recently lost its tag as a national party, has since emerged as a formidable force in Maharashtra politics, forming government on four occasions — in 1999, 2004, 2009, and then briefly in 2019 as part of the MVA.

In recent years though, a resurgent BJP and the many cases filed by central agencies against NCP leaders have led to unease in the party and also the lack of clarity over a potential successor to Pawar. The choice boils down to his daughter and Baramati MP Supriya Sule, and nephew Ajit Pawar who enjoys grassroots support in Maharashtra and also among the party rank and file. In recent weeks, a slew of posters appeared across the state announcing Ajit Pawar as the right man to be Maharashtra CM. These posters have added grist to the rumours that he is set to join the BJP government with a handful of NCP MLAs loyal to him.

The move is believed to have the support of even one-time Pawar loyalists in the party such as Praful Patel. Back in 2019, Ajit Pawar, 63, forged a short-lived alliance with the BJP and was sworn in deputy chief minister, but with none of his partly MLAs backing him then, the grouping couldn’t prove its majority and he returned to the fold. Both he and Sharad Pawar have denied buzz of an imminent alliance between him and the BJP, and on Monday, he even criticised the BJP at a public rally of the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi, the Congress-NCP-Shiv Sena (Uddhav faction) alliance that governed the state till last year when a split in the Shiv Sena unseated it. Sharad Pawar was the architect of the MVA, and his desire to step down from leadership of the NCP could well mean the end of that alliance, analysts said.