Lok Sabha polls: What’s behind Sharad Pawar’s decision to contest polls after a decade-long hiatus?

Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) president Sharad Pawar has announced that he will contest the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. According to a report in The Indian Express, Pawar will try his electoral luck from Madha constituency which falls in western Maharashtra and is a traditional stronghold of the NCP.

Pawar had won the Madha seat in 2009 but did not enter the fray in the 2014 general elections. The announcement is crucial as reports suggested that the NCP chief may not contest the election and field his nephew Ajit Pawar or grandnephew.

Behind the change of decision is a carefully thought out strategy. Pawar senses an opportunity to stake claim to the top job in Delhi and it is this belief that drove his decision to contest polls. According to party sources, Pawar, 78, is contesting elections with a hope that he would emerge as a consensus choice for the Prime Minister’s job if the Lok Sabha is delivered with a hung verdict where both the BJP and Congress will not be in a position to form the government with their choice of prime ministerial candidate, IE reported.

Madha Lok Sabha seat is one of the 48 parliamentary constituencies of Maharashtra. The seat was carved out in 2018 on the recommendations of the Delimitation Commission of India. The constituency has 9.19 lakh registered voters. In 2009, Sharad Pawar had won from here by a margin of over 3 lakh votes. While Pawar had bagged 5.31 lakh votes, his opponent BJP’s Subhash Deshmukh secured 2.16 lakh votes. Deshmukh, a cooperative industry baron, is now Cooperation Minister in the Devendra Fadnavis government.

In 2014, Pawar had not tried his electoral luck and successfully fielded Vijaysinh Mohite-Patil. Pawar is current a Rajya Sabha MP.

The decision to contest election from Madha seat comes a few days after Pawar himself announced his plan to enter the electoral battle. “Ajit Pawar is not going to contest election, Parth Pawar is not going to contest, Rohit Pawar is not going to contest. Sharad Pawar is going to contest,” he had told reporters earlier this week on the sidelines of an event in Pune.

The Pawars and the Mohite-Patil family have a strong dominance in the constituency. Before Pawar floated NCP in 1999, Mohite-Patil was part of the group owing allegiance to former Maharashtra CM Vasantdada Patil. But after Vasantdada’s death in 1987, Mohite-Patil joined Pawar and then quit the Congress to join NCP in 1999.

The Madha parliamentary seat comprises six Vidhan Sabha segments — Karmala, Madha, Sangole, Malsiras (SC), Phaltan (SC) and Man. At present, the NCP controls three seats.