The Shaken and the Starred

Sharad Pawar: Honey, They Shrunk Me

CUT DOWN TO SIZE in Maharashtra, Sharadchandra Govindrao Pawar has been reduced to a leader of just one-and-a-half districts. Often called the Chanakya of politics, Pawar Sr had all his monikers unmasked after his party, NCP (SCP), won a paltry 10 Assembly seats of the 87 it contested. The ‘emperor’ was disrobed by his nephew Ajit ‘Dada’ Pawar, not too long ago his best-mentored go-to man. Ajit’s NCP won 41 of the 59 seats it contested, with an impressive vote share of 9.01 per cent. Pawar Sr’s NCP had notched up 8 out of 10 seats in the Lok Sabha polls just months ago, fuelling talk of a grand strategy against BJP in the Assembly elections. For now, the debate over who the real NCP is has been settled. All that a deflated Pawar Sr, at 83, could say after the results was: “Everyone knows who founded the Nationalist Congress Party.” Sharad Pawar has run out of tricks. His reputation had mostly rested on transactional deals rather than astute strategy since the days he ousted the
Vasantdada Patil government in 1978. NCP’s best Lok Sabha tally with Pawar at the helm was only nine seats and two decades ago, but that never came in the way of his acolytes projecting him as a prime ministerial candidate.

On November 20, 2019, Pawar Sr had sought a meeting with Narendra Modi. Parliament was in session. Pawar reached the prime minister’s room at Sansad Bhavan a little after 12 noon. He told reporters that the meeting was to seek urgent intervention by the Centre in the wake of “crop damage and rising agrarian crisis in the state”. Crucially, though, it was a time when there was uncertainty in Maharashtra about government formation and talks were already on between NCP, Congress and the Shiv Sena. Pawar had a wishlist for Modi—Devendra Fadnavis should not be chief minister, BJP was free to choose anyone else for the post, and his daughter Supriya Sule should be made Union agriculture minister. Both the prime minister and Home Minister Amit Shah had heard him out and said they would get back to him. But the conditions were unacceptable to Modi. That evening, Pawar was shown his place when Anurag Thakur, the junior minister for finance, called to tell him that the conditions had been rejected. But it was not until Ajit Pawar broke away that the Sharad Pawar myth shattered. In mid-2023, taking with him a majority of party MLAs, Ajit claimed to be the real NCP and joined the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena and BJP government. He later secured the party tag from the Election Commission. The nephew had done to the uncle what the uncle had done long ago to Vasantdada Patil. Sharad Pawar had started going down the slippery slope in the early noughts. NCP was formed in 1999 and, for years, Pawar Sr had groomed Ajit as his key troubleshooter and hands-on man. In 2006, with his daughter Supriya in Rajya Sabha, Pawar Sr left NCP’s national affairs to his daughter with Ajit helming the party in the state. Later, he made her working president of NCP without formally handing Ajit the party’s reins. That was the breaking point for Pawar Jr.

“We will return to the people with new energy,” Pawar Sr said on November 24. The name tag on that “new energy”, it appears, will no longer be his but that of his nephew. n

KC Venugopal: The Art of Losing

CONGRESS LEADER KC Venugopal, accompanied by Jairam Ramesh, recently met a senior Union minister often credited with a string of electoral successes and asked jokingly that the minister share tips on winning elections. “First, you should learn the names of individual states of the Union and their capitals,” the minister reportedly shot back, and seriously. Venugopal, General Secretary (Organisation) of Congress, is these days the favourite punching bag in his own party for those who fault him for the recent serial electoral losses, first in Haryana and now in Maharashtra. In both states, Congress snatched defeat from the jaws of seeming victory. The GSO is charged with devising strategies and executing them. But in Haryana the lightweight Venugopal was at a complete loss, steamrollered by Bhupinder Singh Hooda. Maharashtra was different, with no stalwart in the party. That should have worked out well but Venugopal was out of his depth, unable to spell out strategies tailored for specific regions and to keep the narrative localised and relevant. And Congress’ top leadership went into the elections without learning from Haryana, still brandishing a red pocketbook as they did in the LS polls. And with the same Venugopal overseeing poll strategy.

Voters, clearly, saw red.

Venugopal today handles the responsibility in Congress that late stalwart Ahmed Patel once did. Patel was Sonia Gandhi’s closest political adviser and considered, arguably, the most powerful leader in the party outside the Nehru-Gandhi family, without ever holding any key government portfolio. He was a man of multiple talents and consulted by all Congress leaders. Unlike him, Venugopal is taken seriously by none barring members of the first family, and some even surmise that Rahul Gandhi is aware of his shortcomings but unwilling to remove him from the post since he is seen as someone who will not desert the party. Leaders who left Congress routinely fault Venugopal’s lack of astuteness and bandwidth, describe him as “ineffectual”, and maintain that he is incapable of thinking on his feet, often going for the routine. He has proved a serial loser for Congress but has remained GSO even after the party came a cropper in state after state, including Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh (where, under Bhupesh Baghel, it was seen as a sure winner), and Rajasthan (where another veteran, Ashok Gehlot, clearly dominated Venugopal). If they gave an award in Congress for just being and not achieving, Venugopal would be top contender.

Jairam Ramesh and Pawan Khera: Foot in the Mouth

RAHUL GANDHI HAS a knack for surrounding himself with paper tigers, including darbaris like Jairam Ramesh and Pawan Khera who are unlikely to outshine him. Inelegant attacks on political rivals are the mainstay of both these men. They have a lot in common—neither controls any political real estate. Ramesh used his drafting skills and the art of currying favour with the first family of Congress to earn a place in Rajya Sabha and get a ministerial berth. Strange qualifications for moving up the ladder in a winning machine like BJP, but not so in Congress. The unforeseen results from Maharashtra made Ramesh lose his acerbity and fall back on conspiracy theory. His word salad ran thus: “We will definitely analyse the result that has come. But today we can say that even those who won did not anticipate that this result would come. We were assuming that we will get the mandate. The farmers of Maharashtra are angry; the working class of Maharashtra is against the government. And the atmosphere that was there in Maharashtra four-five months ago, the same atmosphere is there today too, we were assuming this and everyone accepted this. The results that have come are completely opposite to this. But this does not mean that we will step back from our agenda… somewhere there is a conspiracy to defeat us… The result of Maharashtra is very strange, I cannot use any other word for it, it is absolutely strange…”

Ramesh’s colleague Pawan Khera’s signature achievement was running the back office for Sheila Dikshit, Delhi’s former and longest-serving chief minister whose personal secretary he was from 1998 to 2008. He was made national spokesperson of Congress in 2021. The next year, he became chairman of Congress’ media and publicity department. He lost no time in putting his foot in his mouth when he referred to Prime Minister Modi as “Narendra Gautamdas Modi”. This was at a press conference to demand a JPC probe on alleged stock manipulation by industrialist Gautam Adani. For this, Khera was deplaned and arrested at Delhi airport by Assam Police based on an FIR registered in Assam. He was forced to eat humble pie, pleading he was “genuinely confused”.

With the likes of Tweedledum and Tweedledee flanking him, Rahul Gandhi may not need any more jokers in his pack.

Eknath Shinde: The Son Balasaheb Never Had

IN 2022, A Marathi biographical drama called Dharmaveer directed by Pravin Tarde was released, based on the lives of late Shiv Sena stalwart Anand Dighe and his protégé Eknath Shinde. Dighe, the Sena strongman in Thane district and arguably the most important party leader after Balasaheb Thackeray, died in August 2001. He would not witness his protégé emerge as the protagonist of another drama years later and become Maharashtra chief minister. Dharamveer 2 was later made under Shinde’s aegis. Shinde rose steadily through the Sena ranks in Thane under Dighe’s guidance but the upward graph got steeper in 2004 after he won the Kopri Pachpakhadi seat which he has now represented for five consecutive terms. In 2005, he was appointed the Thane district head of Shiv Sena. This was the first time an MLA was appointed to such a coveted post in the party. Despite being seen as a powerful leader, Eknath Shinde was an ordinary neta in mainstream politics until he became chief minister of India’s most crucial state. Thereafter, he became an extraordinary leader. With his full beard and red tika, Shinde channelled the leader he had repeatedly credited as his mentor, who to this day enjoys an almost god-like reverence among his followers.

Over the next two-and-a-half years beginning with June 30, 2022, Shinde—often derided by Uddhav Thackeray as “gaddar (traitor)” and “just an autorickshaw driver elevated politically by my father Balasaheb”—drove his political image into every home in Mumbai and Maharashtra. Until the letters CM began to naturally stand for Common Man. In contrast to his predecessor Uddhav, Eknath Shinde kept the doors to ‘Varsha’ open to his fellow citizens at all hours. The official residence of the chief minister suddenly became very accessible, mocking the image of a reclusive Uddhav Thackeray as a closeted chief minister, reluctant to meet ordinary people. If the Shiv Sena patriarch’s key legacy was putting the ordinary Marathi Manus first, Shinde pulled out all the stops to emerge as the legitimate claimant to Balasaheb’s legacy. How successfully he did that was obvious in the Lok Sabha polls when his party won seven seats, with a higher success rate than BJP which won 10. That cemented Shinde’s standing. His party, the Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde) or the Shinde Sena, has won 57 seats. That’s one seat more than what the undivided Sena had got in 2019 and 35 seats more than what Uddhav Thackeray managed to get. Shinde’s triumphs have begun to exert a gravitational pull on the Uddhav Sena’s winners. There is talk of Uddhav’s 20 (out of a total 95 seats contested) MLAs reaching out to Shinde. It is only a matter of time before the man who has emerged as the true inheritor of Anant Dighe and Balasaheb Thackeray challenges the Shiv Sena (UBT)’s control over the cash-rich Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation.n

Supriya Sule: Papa Won’t Preach

SOME AMONG Sharad Pawar’s detractors lay the blame for his steady downslide at the door of putrimoh or unbounded love for his daughter Supriya Sule. For decades, all seemed hunky dory in Maharashtra for Pawar. Then in 2006, Supriya Sule entered Rajya Sabha. Pawar Sr increasingly left NCP’s national affairs to his daughter while Ajit Pawar continued to helm the party in the state. Since 2009, Sule has represented the Pawar borough of Baramati in Lok Sabha. In November 2019, Pawar Sr tried to wrangle a deal surreptitiously with Modi to make Sule Union agriculture minister, a post he had held earlier with much advantage to Maharashtra’s crisis-ridden farm sector. Maybe he was overcompensating for his absence from her simple wedding years ago. It was a deal that could have cemented the balance of power within NCP and paused the tussle between Supriya and Ajit. The deal was proposed even as NCP talked with the Shiv Sena and Congress about an alliance in Maharashtra. After it was rejected by the prime minister, Sharad Pawar made his daughter working president of NCP, without formally handing Ajit Pawar the reins. Pawar Jr broke with his uncle, splitting the party to join the BJP-Eknath Shinde government. Although Ajit acknowledged it was a wrong decision to field his wife Sunetra Pawar against Supriya in the Lok Sabha polls (she won, again), he more recently maintained that he recognised the voice in an audio tape related to a crypto scam poll funding as that of his sister. “The tone, the inflexion, the way she speaks, they all sound like that of my sister’s,” he said. Intriguingly, the bitcoin scam allegations against Sule and Congress state chief Nana Patole entered the Maharashtra election narrative just hours before polling. Former IPS officer Ravindranath Patil claimed to possess voice recordings, allegedly of both leaders, showing that cash converted from bitcoins seized by the Pune police in a crypto ponzi scheme investigation was used to fund the campaign. Sule flatly denied this. But her party, on which MVA relied heavily, managed to rake in only 10 seats.

Akhilesh Yadav: The False Dawn

FOLLOWING THE 2014 Badaun gang rape, Mulayam Singh Yadav drew sharp criticism across the board when he opposed a potential death penalty with his “Boys will be boys. They make mistakes.” His boy Akhilesh made a blunder just a few days later when he replied, “It’s not as if you are in danger,” to a journalist’s question on increasing rape cases in Uttar Pradesh (UP). There were other mistakes that followed even after, at 38, Akhilesh Yadav became the youngest chief minister of UP in March 2012. Those disgruntled with Mulayam’s politics by then, and a large section of youth, were energised by this bicycle riding, likeable scion with a crooked nose (a football injury in his youth) who had studied at military school and then pursued higher studies in Australia. But controversies came thick and fast. On July 28, 2013, Akhilesh suspended IAS officer and Noida sub-divisional magistrate Durga Shakti Nagpal after she demolished a wall of an under-construction mosque in Rabupura. Nagpal had earlier acted firmly against illegal sand-mining which had a significant environmental impact. Akhilesh should have known how important this was, given his environmental engineering degree from Sydney. In September that year, he was forced to revoke the suspension. In December 2016, uncivil war erupted within the Samajwadi Party (SP). Mulayam expelled son Akhilesh and his cousin Ram Gopal from the party for six years for indiscipline but revoked the decision later. Akhilesh responded by divesting his father of the party president’s post but named him chief patron, moving him to the equivalent of BJP’s Marg Darshak Mandal. The Election Commission recognised Akhilesh Yadav’s SP and backed its decision. In 2017, when BJP returned to power in UP after 15 years, with Yogi Adityanath as star campaigner and anti-‘Love Jihad’ slogans resounding through India’s most politically complex state, there was a video clip of Mulayam walking up to whisper something to Narendra Modi. This led to speculation that the father was pleading on behalf of the son and former chief minister, asking that no vendetta probes be unleashed against him.

Mulayam Singh was 50 when he became chief minister of undivided UP for the first time in 1989. The three-time chief minister who, along with BSP, successfully kept the two national parties BJP and Congress at bay for 15 years died in 2022 but had seen much fair and foul weather. He had been an Assembly member since 1967 and jailed during Emergency. He earned his spurs. Akhilesh, born into his political heritage, has taken over as BJP’s main challenger in the state. But he could not win elections without his father’s legacy. The wisdom, or lack of it, of his decisions showed up also in 2017 when he allied with Congress and Rahul Gandhi under the tagline ‘UP ke do ladke (UP’s two boys)’. That led to jibes and the duo failed miserably at the hustings. SP distanced itself from Congress subsequently. That love-hate relationship with Rahul Gandhi popped up again in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, but this time it worked despite Congress. SP dealt a hard blow to BJP by bagging 37 out of 80 seats. Hopes that this success would sustain itself in the recent bypolls in the state, though, were dashed. The BJP-led alliance dominated, winning seven of the nine contested seats. SP managed to win only two and Akhilesh dubbed it “a distorted election”. BJP’s victories have solidified its presence in UP after the Lok Sabha losses and Akhilesh Yadav, as the main challenger, will likely have a long wait before he gets to resign his family Lok Sabha seat of Kannauj and again eye the throne in Lucknow. A winning strategy will need more than a footballer’s instincts.

Uddhav Thackeray: Back to the Wilds

UNDER THE BATON of Uddhav Thackeray, the Shiv Sena (UBT) managed to win only 20 of the 94 Assembly seats it contested, just over a third of the seats won by the Shinde Sena. If Sharad Pawar has been blamed for unbridled putrimoh leading to the steady downslide of NCP, Uddhav Thackeray has been blamed for unbounded putramoh (Aaditya Thackeray was seen as the Achilles’ Heel) that led to the devastating split in the Shiv Sena. Uddhav’s cousin Raj Thackeray was groomed by Balasaheb Thackeray for the top of the Sena leadership, with Uddhav himself showing little interest initially. While Raj copied Balasaheb in style and substance in anticipation of being formally anointed his successor, Uddhav, now 64, was happy pursuing his passion for wildlife photography when the Shiv Sena-BJP government came to power for the first time in 1995. By his own admission, Uddhav was a camera-shy recluse.

Apart from editing party mouthpiece Saamana, his involvement was low until he moved back in with his father. He was made executive head of the party and started attending its meetings, effecting a gradual transformation in its organisation. Raj, once it was clear that Balasaheb preferred his own son (putramoh again), split from the Shiv Sena and formed the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS). MNS entered electoral politics in 2009 but faced a complete washout in the recent Assembly polls, risking loss of party symbol and recognition as a party. Balasaheb Thackeray died in November 2012. The irony is, neither son nor nephew is today seen by the Marathi Manus as the torchbearer of his legacy.

Tejashwi Yadav: La Dolce Vita

LALU PRASAD’S SON is a Class 9 dropout. He played cricket in school. An indulgent and influential father—who was also president of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), former Bihar chief minister, then railway minister, and a former MP—reportedly pulled strings to get Tejashwi Yadav on the Delhi Daredevils IPL team. But his cricketing skills were not good enough; he was benched for the entire season. Yadav Jr is known to prefer a lazy day that begins in the afternoon and likes travelling to Delhi often to grace entertainment spectacles. Living la dolce vita, his laidback style is in contrast to the sober, responsible, socialist image he has to project in public. Lalu had blueprinted a project to make impressive political careers for his sons and daughters and played his cards well enough to make Tejashwi deputy chief minister of Bihar under Nitish Kumar. But in July last year, CBI filed a chargesheet in a land-for-jobs scam against the deputy chief minister. Apart from Tejashwi, the supplementary chargesheet named his parents, Lalu Prasad and former chief minister Rabri Devi. In February this year, the Supreme Court quashed a defamation case against Yadav Jr after he apologised for a remark about Gujaratis that a complainant deemed derogatory. And that’s an incomplete list of cases he is allegedly involved in. Tejashwi does have some achievements to his name, albeit with more than a little help from his dad. Representing the Raghopur Assembly constituency since 2015, Tejashwi was the youngest deputy chief minister and youngest leader of the opposition and has held various portfolios in the Bihar government. But all the handholding by Lalu and his clever chess moves could not help Tejashwi keep even one of the four Assembly seats that went to polls recently. He seems to have taken it for granted that the MY social alliance crafted by his father is enough to see him through his political career, even as other non-Yadav OBCs desert RJD. In the Lok Sabha polls, Tejashwi Yadav held more than 250 public meetings and roadshows, toured the length and breadth of Bihar, and campaigned extensively. Despite this, RJD won only four out of 23 seats. Its strike rate in Bihar in the General Election was a dismal 17 per cent. That was still better than what Tejashwi Yadav, the Delhi Daredevil, scored long ago.

About The Author

PR Ramesh

PR Ramesh is Managing Editor of Open