The NCP debacle in its very base in the sugar belt of Western Maharashtra is all the more poignant in Pune district where the party lost two of the three seats it contested giving a big jolt to the perceived domination of party president Sharad Pawar and his family in the region.
The results has come as a personal blow to the NCP chief for whom the victory of daughter Supriya Sule from Baramati constituency of the pocket can hardly be any consolation. Out of the four Lok Sabha seats in Pune district, NCP had contested Maval, Shirur and Baramati, leaving the Pune city constituency to Congress where sitting MP Suresh Kalmadi won a hard-fought battle in the face of a hostile posture from Maharashtra minster and NCP campaign manager Ajit Pawar.
Both Sharad Pawar and Ajit, his nephew, had conducted a high-pitch electioneering in Pune district, their home turf, where politics at all levels revolves around the family.
But they could not stop the Shiv Sena from capturing the two seats of Maval and Shirur. In Maval, a newly carved out constituency in the district, the honour of representing it for the first time went to Gajanan Babar of Shiv Sena who defeated NCP candidate Azambhai Pansare. Sena's Shivajirao Adhalrao Patil emerged victorious in Shirur where he trounced NCP's Vilas Lande by a margin of over one lakh votes.
Although Supriya Sule won the Baramati seat with a massive margin of exceeding three lakhs, as was expected in a constituency cultivated and nurtured for over four decades, the victory failed to create a euphoria for the party workers smarting under the two defeats. The NCP sources now concede in private that the agressive posturing of Ajit Pawar and his abrasive treatment to ordinary party workers had resulted in large scale discontent and groupism within the NCP cadres. A controversial selection of candidates too contributed to the NCP wooes, they say.
Ajit Pawar who brought NCP to power in Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) by aligning with the Saffron Brigade to marginalise Kalmadi-led Congress in the civic body in the much debated 'Pune Pattern' that went against the Congress-NCP alliance at state and national level, remained at loggerheads with Kalmadi till the end of election campaign. He refused to campaign for Kalmadi as an alliance nominee despite Sharad Pawar's directive that NCP workers should canvass for Kalmadi in keeping with the alliance ethics.
Even though he managed to somehow retain the Pune seat, aided by MNS share of around 75,000 votes that cut through the BJP vote bank, Kalmadi lost no time in attacking Ajit Pawar as he demanded his resignation on the ground that he (Ajit) being district guardian minister in charge of the alliance campaign failed to deliver.