NCP merger still uncertain, but speculation continues

The idea of a merger, if it prevails, may have emanated not from any emotional reasons—politics is almost invariably a game where emotions are not a strong driver—but from the inability of the party to manage its internal affairs.

Whether the two Nationalist Congress Parties—the one led by Sharad Pawar and the breakaway group that Ajit Pawar spearheaded—would merge is a question that continues to be in the realm of speculation. It will likely get clearer after the proposed meeting between the elder Maratha and Praful Patel, now the Ajit Pawar-led party’s working president, on November 10.

The idea of a merger, if it prevails, may have emanated not from any emotional reasons—politics is almost invariably a game where emotions are not a strong driver—but from the inability of the party to manage its internal affairs. In the absence of a strong leader like Sharad Pawar, who was the flock’s fountain head, with every other person being a happy and willing middle-level leader or a foot soldier, the party was forced to opt for a collective leadership, which has not worked.

It was a strange and sorry spectacle of the NCP leaders recently flocking to the Union Home Minister, Amit Shah, to discuss party affairs, though it was passed off as something to discuss constituency work. All details are still under wraps, but the only legitimate purpose could have been to seek the return of the finance portfolio in the coalition government led by the BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis. Ajit Pawar had held it, but it was not allotted to Sunetra Pawar. Did they run to Shah to complain?

None after Ajit Pawar

Though Ajit Pawar walked away, thanks to the Election Commission, with the name and title as well as the symbol of the party after splitting the NCP, founded in 1999, his party had floundered in managing its affairs. Even in the undivided NCP, he was virtually a proxy for the senior Pawar and wielded a huge clout.

That kind of leadership is lacking in the breakaway NCP after Ajit Pawar’s demise, and an emotional constituency voted for his wife, Sunetra Pawar, to the Maharashtra Assembly with almost 98 per cent of all the ballots cast from Baramati, a seat her husband had held continuously since 1991. A novice in active politics, except for watching her husband from the sidelines at their home, she did not have the clout her husband had before and after the 2023 split.

Whether in the original party or in the faction Ajit Pawar led post the split in July 2023, there is no one who commands that respect and ability to keep the party running on all cylinders. No other member of the extended Pawar family has yet demonstrated that ability. Sunetra succeeded her husband in the constituency, the Assembly and the alliance, but her lack of political experience has proved a disadvantage, making collective leadership an alternative.

Even now, neither party thinks that it can be run by a non-Pawar, and the only person who can take the lead in a merged party is Supriya Sule, the elder Pawar’s daughter and a four-time MP since 2009. That could also happen if a merger is negotiated, and the ageing—now 85 years old and often in and out of hospitals—Sharad Pawar would be the head offering guidance. At worst, he could be an emeritus president.

Sunetra a novice

The disenchantment is driven by the fact that Sunetra Pawar, Deputy Chief Minister, has been influenced in decision-making by her son, the general secretary of her party. He is equally inexperienced and is a novice at the cut-and-thrust of politics and at 36 years of age and has been more a businessman than a politician.

It must be said that the patriarch Pawar’s NCP may not be averse to a merger if the ranking of the leaders is clear and to his family’s advantage because his daughter, Supriya Sule, MP, is his party’s working president and the eldest now on the extended family’s political side. In politics, the chief of the NCP, Ajit Pawar’s widow, is younger. Her party appears willing but not yet clear if it desires the merger.

Tatkare fuels merger talk

What we have been hearing about the idea of a merger is mostly from Sunil Tatkare, MP and Maharashtra unit’s president of the NCP (Ajit Pawar). That said, Tatkare has actually been blowing hot and cold, indicating an imminent merger and then denying it. The latest is that, had Ajit Pawar been alive, the two parties would have got together on February 12, as voiced by Tatkare. Then too, some leaders of the breakaway party had visited Sharad Pawar in a hospital.

A meeting, its agenda or purpose unknown yet, if held on November 10, that is Tuesday next, between Sharad Pawar and Praful Patel was also announced after the latter visited the elder politician in a Mumbai hospital. What transpired between them is also not known, and if Sharad Pawar wants a secret kept, it has to be opened only after his clearance. That has been his way of dealing with matters political. He is extremely watchful in this regard.