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It is Pawar all the way in western Maharashtra, but will it be enough?

Pankaj Upadhyaya in Sangli

When Sharad Pawar formed his Nationalist Congress Party after being thrown out of the Congress nearly four months back, he probably had last year's seat positions in the state playing at the back of his mind.

In 1998, when the Congress and its allies won 37 out of the 48 Lok Sabha seats, he was widely acclaimed as the architect of this stunning victory over the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party combine. But, can he repeat the feat in 1999 without the support of an established party and the comfort of a readily recognisable symbol?

In this election, Pawar faces the prospect of being reduced to a sub-regional leader with his influence restricted to the state's sugar belt. And this, when he has gone public with his claim of being a national leader and a prime ministerial aspirant too, will prove to be very embarrassing for the Maratha chieftain.

The NCP seems to have failed to make any impact in Vidarbha, Konkan, Bombay and to a certain extent in Marathwada, thus putting the brakes on Pawar's plans to emerge as an important player at the national level riding on his strength in the state.

The story, however, is different in western Maharashtra. Though the battles are tough here (Pawar was the first to admit this), the strength that the NCP commands is overwhelming. There are districts like Sangli, Kolhapur, Satara and Solapur where the entire Congress set-up has walked into the Pawar camp, leaving the Congress district committee offices deserted. A majority of these leaders are the Congress rebel candidates of the 1995 election who later entered the Shiv Sena, some even became ministers, but were waiting for a nod from 'Saheb' to return.

In fact, the Congress was hit so hard in western Maharashtra by Pawar's rebellion that the party found it difficult to nominate candidates for assembly seats in the above mentioned districts.

The party, however, did manage to nominate some strong candidates for the Lok Sabha seats who had the capacity to win elections on their own steam, irrespective of the party they represented. So, while Congress candidates Prakash Bapu Patil (Sangli), Kalappaanna Aawade (Ichalkaranji) and Sushil Kumar Shinde (Solapur) are the favourites, a large majority of assembly segments under their Lok Sabha constituencies are likely to return NCP candidates.

The reverse, however, is not true in the NCP's case. Its strong Lok Sabha candidates are supported by a winning combination of assembly candidates. For instance, in Kolhapur, Sadashivrao Mandalik has able support in the interiors parts of the district in the form of strong assembly candidates. In Baramati, though Pawar's nephew Ajit Pawar faces a tough challenge from independent Chandrarao Taware, who is supported by both the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party, most assembly candidates are comfortably placed.

Now it's a matter of debate how Pawar will perceive this situation -- a victory or a defeat. While his party performance in assembly segments will bring him closer to forming the government in the state, the loss in Lok Sabha segments will push him farther from his life-time ambition of occupying the prime minister's chair.

Though much has been made of the NCP's new symbol, experts believe it is not going to be the decisive factor. After all, over 20 Congress rebels got elected on symbols as strange as the NCP's alarm clock in the 1995 assembly election.

That was all about Pawar's ability to win seats, but there is another dimension to the Maratha strongman's politics and that is his ability to ensure the defeat of rival candidates. He used this ability with telling effect when he got over 20 Independents elected from western Maharashtra in 1995, when his relations with the bosses in Delhi were not at their best. All these candidates, as mentioned earlier, were Congress rebels and almost all of them defeated official Congress candidates.

In fact, it was the rebellion in the Congress that paved the way for the Sena-BJP combine to assume power in the state. Pawar killed two birds with one stone: he showed to the Congress high command his influence in the state, and ensured that his men stayed in power.

This time too there is talk of Pawar having struck an arrangement with the BJP and now he has two targets -- Congress and the Sena. This arrangement is more evident in Vidarbha and other parts of the state for the simple reason that Pawar knows he can't win too many seats there. In western Maharashtra he is obviously concentrating on winning more seats.

There is a saying in western Maharashtra which goes: Pawar may not win, but he never loses.

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