It is extremely loud and incredibly close in Baramati as ‘Pawar’s People’ battle it out for supremacy
The Hindu
As Sharad Pawar rattles sabres with his nephew, Ajit Pawar, for control of Baramati and the NCP, the paterfamilias of the Pawar clan and Maharashtra’s politics faces the toughest contest of his life.
Were Stanley Kubrick’s classic cold war satire Dr. Strangelove to be set in Baramati, it may well be titled Mr. Pawar: or how I learned to stop worrying and love my nephew.
As the 83-year-old Sharad Pawar rattles sabres with his mercurial nephew, Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, for control of Baramati (which goes to polls on May 7) and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), the paterfamilias of the Pawar clan and Maharashtra’s politics faces the toughest contest of his life.
Yet this soap opera of a contest, which has Mr. Sharad Pawar’s daughter, Supriya Sule (the Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi’s candidate and incumbent Baramati MP) pitted against Mr. Ajit’s wife Sunetra Pawar (the ruling Mahayuti’s candidate), is leavened with high political comedy which has seen bitter foes turning into overnight friends across the six Assembly segments in the Baramati Lok Sabha.
On paper, the arithmetic seems to favour Mr. Ajit and the Mahayuti as his ‘palace revolution’ in July last year, which split the NCP founded by his uncle in 1999, has completely upset the political balance in Baramati.
As a result, Mr. Sharad Pawar (and Ms. Sule) today has no MLA from the NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) camp. Ms. Sule and her father are dependent on the goodwill of their MVA ally, the Congress, which holds the Bhor and Purandar segments.
Khadakwasla, which has the largest concentration of voters (4.7 lakh) is firmly in the grip of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). So is the Daund Assembly segment, whose legislator is the BJP’s Rahul Kul.
His wife, Kanchan Kul, was the saffron party’s candidate in the 2019 general election. While Ms. Sule coasted to victory with a comfortable margin of more than 1.5 lakh votes, Ms. Kul performed creditably, garnering more than 40% of the vote share as opposed to Ms. Sule’s 52%.
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