Saying that there was no ‘Modi wave’ this time, senior Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Ajit Pawar on Tuesday expressed confidence that the Pawar clan would retain the Baramati Lok Sabha seat and NCP MP Supriya Sule would be re-elected by a handsome margin.
Ms. Sule, who is Mr. Pawar’s cousin — and NCP chief Sharad Pawar’s daughter — is seeking mandate for the third time. She is pitted against the BJP-Shiv Sena’s candidate Kanchan Kul, the wife Rashtriya Samaj Paksha (RSP) legislator Rahul Kul.
“We expect the victory margin to be more than one lakh votes. This time, we started our campaign well in advance and focused on improving our reach through an intensive house-to-house campaign,” Mr. Pawar said, speaking after casting his vote in Katewadi village in Baramati on Tuesday.
Baramati is the Pawar clan’s bastion and the stakes here are arguably the highest in western Maharashtra and perhaps the State as well, given Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s singular resolve to root out the family’s influence from the region. Mr. Pawar, a former deputy chief minister, said, “If PM Modi, BJP national president Amit Shah and other top leaders stopped being verbally aggressive towards us, how else would they galvanise the BJP-Sena rank and file? So these are things which we do not take seriously.”
He claimed that the Prime Minister had cancelled his rally in Baramati and held it in Akluj in Solapur district instead once he sensed which way the wind was blowing. “When the Prime Minister held a rally here for the 2014 Assembly elections, he attracted an audience of nearly a lakh people. Yet, I won by more than one lakh votes. So, he must have been puzzled by the voting behaviour of Baramati residents and wisely decided not to come here this time.”
Mr. Pawar had successfully weathered the ‘Modi wave’ in the 2014 Assembly election to rout his BJP opponent by more than 1.5 lakh votes.
“At least 20 ministers and legislators of the BJP-Sena ‘Mahayuti’ have held rallies in Baramati … but then everyone has a right to campaign in our democracy,” he quipped.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Ms. Sule won by a slender margin of less than 70,000 votes, being given a stiff fight by the RSP chief Mahadev Jankar. “This time we have been very vigilant to avoid such close-run situations. All problem areas, including coordination with our allies, were resolved beforehand. Furthermore, all questions on the alleged lack of development in Baramati posed by BJP-Sena leaders in their campaign were promptly answered by us by holding public meetings immediately afterwards,” he said.
He added that in Indapur, there was no rancour any more between NCP MLA Dattatray Bharne and senior Congressman Harshavardhan Patil. Mr. Bharne had defeated Mr. Patil, a long-time State Cabinet minister, in the 2014 Assembly elections when the NCP and the Congress had contested separately.
He said Mr. Modi’s veering away from development issues and targeting political families, be it the Pawars or the Nehru-Gandhi family, on a personal level would prove to be his and the BJP’s undoing. “Five years ago, Mr. Modi fought and won the elections on the development plank, but this time he has only spewed invective at us. The promises made to the 136-crore populace have not been fulfilled. Neither the PM nor his advisers have been willing to speak on the issues raised by [Congress President] Rahul Gandhi or [Sharad] Pawar saheb ,” he said.
He said that in 2014, Mr. Modi’s rallies had attracted an audience of lakhs, but this time there were barely 35,000-40,000 people at his rallies in Maharashtra.
Mr. Pawar said the BJP had lowered itself in the eyes of the people, be it the through the nomination of the controversial Pragya Singh Thakur in Bhopal or the intra-party brawl at a rally in Jalgaon.
When questioned about his chief ministerial aspirations, Mr. Pawar said: “Everyone has this hope [of being Chief Minister] and so do I, but that will only happen if we [the NCP] cross the magic figure in the 2019 Assembly elections, and if the public in Maharashtra and my party stand by me.”
