Despite suffering a politically debilitating split in the NCP last year, veteran leader Sharad Pawar led from the front in the Lok Sabha polls in Maharashtra, where his party won eight of the 10 seats it contested, cementing his position as the tallest politician in the state.
The 83-year-old electoral battle hardened politician is a lynchpin for the anti-BJP opposition alliance at the national level and a key architect of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) in the state.
With its performance in the Lok Sabha polls, the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) has received a new lease of life in the state, where assembly polls are due in October.
The former Union minister, who has more than 50 years of experience in electoral politics, led the campaign for his party NCP (SP), which fought the polls on a new symbol -- “a man blowing turha” (a traditional trumpet) -- held strategy meetings and carefully selected candidates for the Lok Sabha elections.
The party contested 10 of the 48 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra in alliance with the MVA constituents Congress and the Shiv Sena (UBT), and won eight of them on Tuesday. It lost Satara and Raver. But the NCP (SP) candidate gave a tough fight to the BJP rival in Satara.
Political analyst Prakash Akolkar said the NCP (SP) has produced an excellent strike rate (winning 8 of 10 Lok Sabha seats it contested) and it only goes to show which is the "real" NCP.
In 2019, the BJP managed to get several NCP bigwigs into its fold on the eve of assembly polls, but an undeterred Pawar managed a turnaround for his party and his speech in Satara in heavy rains became a defining moment in campaigning.
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The undivided NCP went on to win more than 50 seats in the state assembly polls and later became a part of the MVA government led by Uddhav Thackeray, who quit as CM in June 2022 following a revolt in the Shiv Sena.
In July last year, the old warhorse was in for a shock when his nephew Ajit Pawar led a revolt in the NCP and joined hands with the BJP and became a part of the state government, where he became deputy chief minister. Along with Ajit Pawar, eight other NCP MLAs also took oath as ministers in the Eknath Shinde government.
Former Union minister Praful Patel, once a close aide of Sharad Pawar, also deserted him and joined the rival faction.
Following a vertical split in the NCP, about 40 MLAs and a couple of MLCs joined the Ajit Pawar camp as the rival factions fought a pitched legal and political battle for the party name and symbol.
Over the last one year, Ajit Pawar and Praful Patel made statements that created confusion about the senior Pawar and his ideological leanings. They asserted it was Sharad Pawar who wanted to join the BJP-led alliance, but backed out at the last minute.
But Ajit Pawar's decision to field his wife Sunetra against cousin and sitting NCP (SP) MP Supriya Sule in the family bastion of Baramati in Pune district signalled he did not have his uncle's blessings.
Despite Ajit Pawar's constant barbs, including on his advanced age, Sharad Pawar, a Rajya Sabha MP, chose not to react.
The senior Pawar not only campaigned hard for his daughter Supriya Sule, who was poised to win from Baramati, but also criss-crossed the state addressing rallies for MVA nominees.
Ajit Pawar, despite being in the ruling alliance, got only five Lok Sabha seats to contest. Of these, the Parbhani seat was given to Mahadev Jankar of the Rashtriya Samaj Paksh. The Ajit Pawar-led NCP won only one seat -- Raigad.
After the split in the NCP, founded in 1999, Sharad Pawar declared he would travel the entire state and raise a new leadership from the grassroots level to take the party forward.
Asked if he was devoting more campaigning time to Baramati as it was a matter of his political survival, without naming his nephew, the senior Pawar had remarked, "What can one do when people whom you trust ditch you?" During campaigning, Sharad Pawar reached out to his old rivals like Anantrao Thopte to seek support for his daughter Sule.
The veteran politician was among the first opposition leaders to seek unity among anti-BJP parties to take on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the NDA in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
Now, with the INDIA bloc putting up an impressive show in the Lok Sabha polls and managing to stop the BJP juggernaut, opposition leaders will be looking at the senior Pawar for guidance in navigating the political space against the saffron party post-elections.