Among all who could have been India's PM, Sharad Pawar still has a chance

In the run-up to Lok Sabha Elections 2019, Pawar has so far ruled himself out of contention while leading a possible coalition comprising the Congress and regional parties

India has had its share of unlikely prime ministers in P V Narasimha Rao, H D Deve Gowda, Inder Kumar Gujral and Manmohan Singh. There are also those who came close but the ultimate prize in Indian politics kept eluding them. This list includes Jyoti Basu, N D Tiwari, Pranab Mukherjee and Sharad Pawar. And then there are the instances of K Kamaraj and Sonia Gandhi, who spurned the opportunity when it knocked at their doors.

Of all who could have been India’s prime ministers, Pawar, 78, still stands a chance. Until now, Pawar has ruled himself out of contention in leading a possible coalition comprising the Congress and regional parties in 2019. He, however, has emerged a key interlocutor between Opposition political parties.

Along with Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, Pawar is the strategist of what Opposition hopes could turn into either a third United Progressive Alliance (UPA-3) government, or another United Front government, which had ruled at the Centre from 1996 to 1998.

Pawar’s Delhi residence at 6, Janpath, has become a hub for Opposition leaders to get together for strategising, or even recriminateions, for instance after an Opposition rally in New Delhi on February 13. Several key Opposition leaders, including Congress President Rahul Gandhi, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, Naidu and others got together at his bungalow after the rally to agree on a common strategy against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah.

Pawar and Naidu had worked the phones to ask Opposition leaders to either land in Kolkata or make public statements to express solidarity with Banerjee when she sat on a dharna to protest the attempted arrest of former Kolkata police commissioner.

Pawar was a key player in keeping the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) alliance alive for 15 years in Maharashtra, and also during UPA-1 and -2 coalition governments. Pawar, who had walked out of the Congress on the issue of Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origins, was also one of the earliest benefactors of Banerjee when she quit the Congress to float her own party in 1997.

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Pawar has never lost an electoral battle, whether Assembly or Lok Sabha. At 27, he was an MLA in Maharashtra, the state’s chief minister at 38, and a contender for the prime ministerial chair in his early 50s in 1991. Pawar’s influence also cuts across political parties, and he has groomed or helped several leaders climb the ladder.

Even BJP leaders like Gopinath Munde and Nitin Gadkari are known to have turned to Pawar for guidance, while the late Bal Thackeray, the Shiv Sena chief, and Pawar were political rivals but counted each other as good friends. The evidence of his influence across parties came in 2014.

In 2014 Lok Sabha polls, as the Modi wave swept much of northern, central and western India, the contest in Baramati, the Pawar family pocket borough near Pune, could have become a tough one for Pawar’s daughter Supriya Sule. She had won that seat in 2009 with a massive margin, getting 66 per cent of the votes polled.

There was speculation that the Modi-led BJP, which was until then not confident of attaining a majority on its own in 2014 Lok Sabha polls, was investing in the Pawar clan to support its minority coalition government. However, such an eventuality did not arise, as BJP bagged 282 seats.

However, a few months later, the NCP and Congress severed their alliance for the Maharashtra Assembly polls, as did the BJP and Shiv Sena. The BJP emerged the single largest party but fell well short of the majority mark. As the Shiv Sena put conditions for its support to the BJP-led government, Pawar’s NCP provided the government unconditional support, giving the BJP leadership time to negotiate with the Sena.

Privately, politicians of all hues admire Pawar for his development work in Baramati. It is difficult to find people unemployed in the area, which has sugar mills, milk cooperatives, factories and vineyards and has become a hub for education. The 40-acre campus named suitably as Vidyanagari also has a museum which houses all gifts that Pawar has received in his political career. The clan’s interests in real estate, cooperatives and education has also made it one of the richest political clans of the country.

Pawar’s father, Govindrao Pawar, was an employee of farmer cooperative in Baramati, and mother, Sharda Bai, took care of the family farm and was a social and political worker. Late Y B Chavan, one of the tallest politicians of Maharashtra, mentored Pawar.

In 1978, Pawar broke away from the Congress to form a coalition government with the Janata Party, becoming the chief minister of the state at a young age of 38. When she returned to power in February 1980, Indira Gandhi dismissed the Progressive Democratic Front government. Pawar remained out of the Congress, helming Indian National Congress (Socialist), or Congress (S).

In the Assembly polls in March 1985, the Congress (S) emerged as the principal Opposition to the Congress. Pawar returned to the Congress in 1987, and became chief minister of the state again in 1988. He led the Congress to winning a majority of the state’s Lok Sabha seats in 1991. Though it fell short of majority in the Assembly polls, it formed the government.
 

After Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, Pawar and N D Tiwari were two leaders who could have become the prime minister, but Sonia Gandhi preferred P V Narasimha Rao, who lacked his own political base. Pawar served as the union minister of defence in the P V Narasimha Rao government, and shifted to Maharashtra as its chief minister in March 1993. On March 12, 1993, bomb blasts killed hundreds in Mumbai. There were also allegations of corruption against Pawar, with social activist Anna Hazare sitting on a fast.

Eventually, the Congress lost the Assembly polls to the Shiv Sena-BJP combine in 1995. In 1997, Pawar unsuccessfully challenged Sitaram Kesri for the post of the Congress party’s president. On May 25, 1999, after the Congress expelled him for questioning the foreign origins of Sonia Gandhi, Pawar and some other leaders founded the Nationalist Congress Party.

Over the years, Pawar, his daughter and nephew Ajit Pawar have faced several allegations of their links with the underworld, the stamp paper scam and some that relate to his stint as the Union agriculture minister. However, Pawar has survived those and remains one of the more respected politicians among his ilk, having supported and groomed several younger politicians who aspire to replicate the development work in Baramati in their respective constituencies.

Pawar keeps unwell and his supporters are looking at his nephew Ajit and daughter Supriya to take over the mantle. There are concerns in the party that neither has the common connect that Pawar does, and would find it difficult to fill his large shoes. There is speculation that the NCP could soon return to its parent party.