NCP was all about Sharad Pawar (left) and his personal charisma until his nephew Ajit Pawar staged a rebellion.
Credit: PTI Photos
The state of Maharashtra goes to a single-stage voting on November 20 with counting of votes scheduled for November 23, just a day before the current 288-member Assembly’s term ends.
Maharashtra sees a direct fight between the two main coalitions – the Maha Vikas Aghadi comprising Congress, Shiv Sena (UBT), and Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar) is pitted against the ruling Maha Yuti combine, which includes Shiv Sena (Shinde), BJP and NCP (Ajit Pawar).
For a layman it takes a while to understand the contours of Maharashtra politics as till 2019 it was all about Congress/NCP vs BJP/Shiv Sena.
NCP owes its origin way back to 1999 when the trio of Sharad Pawar, P A Sangma and Tariq Anwar staged a rebellion against the citizenship of the then Congress party president Sonia Gandhi.
Though NCP was launched as a party opposed to Congress and Sonia’s leadership, it later toned down its stand and joined the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance in 2004.
In Maharashtra, NCP was all about Sharad Pawar and his personal charisma until his nephew Ajit Pawar decided that enough was enough and made a move to come out of his uncle’s shadow.
In 2019, after the Assembly elections, the Congress-NCP combined forged an alliance with Shiv Sena who severed ties with the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, and made Uddhav Thackeray the Chief Minister.
Three years later, a splinter faction of Shiv Sena led by Eknath Shinde toppled the Uddhav government and Shinde became the Chief Minister with the support of a majority of Shiv Sena rebels and the BJP. On that occasion, Ajit stayed put with MVA, though it was just a matter of time before he would become vocal about his ambitions.
In July 2023, the Shinde government got a further fillip when Ajit Pawar broke away from the parent NCP with a group of MLAs and joined the Maha Yuti government with himself being made the Deputy Chief Minister.
The NCP split in 2023 had more to do with Ajit’s personal ambitions as he realised that Sharad Pawar was anointing his daughter Supriya Sule as the heir apparent.
With him refusing to play second fiddle any more, Ajit decided to switch to the NDA camp and engineered a ‘coup’ of sorts as he got most of the NCP MLAs on his side. At that time he also took a veiled dig at the senior Pawar, saying the latter should quit active politics and make way for younger hands.
The matter did not end there. After a legal tussle, the Ajit faction was recognised as the official NCP by the Election Commission in February 2024 and they earned the party symbol.
The Ajit Pawar-led NCP got a reality check in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections when the party won just one of the four seats it contested as the Maha Yuti combine faced significant electoral losses.
Now it remains to be seen if Ajit Pawar can bounce back from the Lok Sabha poll debacle and stage a comeback in the Assembly elections.
Assembly Elections 2024 | The Maharashtra Assembly polls will take place against the backdrop of a fractured political landscape in the western state where the Shiv Sena and NCP will be going up against the Uddhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar factions, even as the BJP and Congress try to make their mark. Meanwhile, in Jharkhand, the JMM faces a new challenge after Hemant Soren's recent arrest and Champai, a longstanding party member, joining the BJP. The Haryana election resulted in a shock loss for Congress, which was looking to galvanize on the Lok Sabha poll performance, while J&K also saw the grand old party eventually stepping away from the cabinet, with Omar Abdullah's JKNC forming government. It remains to be seen if the upcoming polls help BJP cement its position further or provide a fillip to I.N.D.I.A. Check live updates and track the latest coverage, live news, in-depth opinions, and analyses only on Deccan Herald.
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