top of page

By:

Rajendra Pandharpure

15 April 2025 at 7:55:54 pm

Congress Shakes Off Its Lethargy

Rahul Gandhi’s student outreach is giving the Congress a boost in western Maharashtra but converting street energy into electoral momentum will be the harder task. Pune: For a party that has spent much of the past dozen years looking politically exhausted, the Congress is finally showing signs of life. It appears that Rahul Gandhi’s Chhatron Ki Goonj (“Voice of Students”) campaign, which brought him to Pune has provided Maharashtra Congress workers with a much-needed sense of political...

Congress Shakes Off Its Lethargy

Rahul Gandhi’s student outreach is giving the Congress a boost in western Maharashtra but converting street energy into electoral momentum will be the harder task. Pune: For a party that has spent much of the past dozen years looking politically exhausted, the Congress is finally showing signs of life. It appears that Rahul Gandhi’s Chhatron Ki Goonj (“Voice of Students”) campaign, which brought him to Pune has provided Maharashtra Congress workers with a much-needed sense of political purpose. The Congress’s student wing had already been demanding an inquiry into the NEET examination controversy and the resignation of the Union education minister. After the lathi-charge on students on July 20, the party shifted into a more combative mode with Gandhi attempting to turn the episode into a broader political campaign. He staged a sit-in outside Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s residence and was removed by police. He subsequently appeared at press conferences alongside students injured during the protests and recently accompanied students wounded by pellet guns while filing an FIR with the Delhi Police. Politics of Confrontation By placing students at the centre of his campaign, Gandhi is seeking to reposition himself as a political interlocutor for younger Indians. The response at the Chhatron Ki Goonj gathering in Prayagraj suggested that the message had found an audience. Pune was the next stop. The August 22 gathering brought the campaign to western Maharashtra, a region where the Congress has traditionally had a substantial political footprint but where its organisational machinery has lost much of its old vitality. The event offered Gandhi an opportunity to reconnect with students and young voters while simultaneously energising a state unit that has often appeared trapped between organisational inertia and the dominance of its allies. The significance of the Pune event therefore extends beyond the size of the crowd. For much of the Congress’s recent history, that belief has been in short supply. A high-energy campaign centred on students, examinations, jobs and institutional accountability gives the party a simpler proposition to sell. There is also a wider political calculation. Western Maharashtra remains one of the most politically competitive regions in the state, shaped by the fortunes of the Congress, the Nationalist Congress Party factions and the BJP. The Congress cannot afford to surrender the region to its rivals if it wants to rebuild itself in Maharashtra. Nor can it rely indefinitely on alliances to compensate for weak grassroots mobilisation. Gandhi’s intervention may thus be less about an immediate electoral breakthrough than about rebuilding political muscle. Student politics provides a useful entry point because grievances over examinations, recruitment and employment cut across caste and party affiliations. They also offer the Congress an issue on which it can attack the government without being trapped in the familiar ideological contests of Indian politics. But a crowd at a political event can only demonstrate mood; it cannot by itself produce votes. The real test for the Congress will be whether the energy generated by Chhatron Ki Goonj survives after the microphones are switched off. Can student mobilisation be converted into campus networks, local campaigns and eventually a durable cadre? Can the Maharashtra unit turn Mr Gandhi’s visibility into sustained activity in constituencies where the party has been eclipsed? Those are harder questions. The Congress’s challenge is to ensure that the goonj does not fade once the rally is over.

Pawar vs Pawar: A Dynasty Divided

In Maharashtra’s long and complicated history of politics, very few stories are as fascinating or as layered as the silent but very real tug-of-war happening inside the Pawar family. On one side stands the patriarch, 85-year-old Sharad Pawar, one of India’s sharp political minds who has been Chief Minister of Maharashtra four times.


On the other stands Parth Pawar, his grandnephew and son of the deceased Ajit Pawar, who has just been sworn in as a Rajya Sabha MP. While Sharad Pawar, as the chief of NCP (SP), was fielded by the opposition alliance Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), Parth was fielded by the NCP aligned with the ruling Mahayuti alliance led by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.


To understand why Sharad Pawar is unhappy with Parth, one must understand why the octogenarian is miffed with Fadnavis. In 2014, when Fadnavis first became the Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Pawar Sr. had quietly hoped that Eknath Khadse, then a senior BJP leader from north Maharashtra, who was known to be friendly with the undivided NCP, would get the top job. If Khadse became CM, Sharad Pawar believed he could control the State government’s decisions from behind the scenes.


But the smart and careful Fadnavis got the job instead, throwing cold water over Pawar’s plans. Still, Maharashtra’s Machiavelli tried to adjust. He gave indirect support to the BJP government during a difficult period when the BJP and Shiv Sena were quarrelling with each other.

But Fadnavis was always one step ahead. He outplayed his intra-party BJP rivals like Khadse, Vinod Tawde and Pankaja Munde.


Byzantine Intrigue

In July 2023, Ajit Pawar’s defection to the Mahayuti and splitting of the NCP was a major blow for Sharad Pawar. While some claim Pawar had fought hard to stop this from happening, other ‘conspiracy theorists’ believe that it was actually Sharad Pawar’s own strategy to align with the ruling BJP and return to power.


After all, a similar move had occurred in 2019, when Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar startled Maharashtra with their infamous early morning oath-taking ceremony. However, that arrangement collapsed soon after, reportedly due to Sharad Pawar’s intervention.


It is said that this incident deeply upset both Ajit Pawar and Devendra Fadnavis, who, since then developed a strong tacit understanding. Many feel that it was this growing closeness that has also strengthened the position of Parth Pawar and Sunetra Pawar today. Some political observers believe that this entire chain of events has quietly reshaped the balance of power within the Pawar family and Maharashtra politics.


First, Eknath Shinde’s revolt in 2022 had rent the Shiv Sena asunder and triggered the collapse of Uddhav Thackeray’s MVA government – whose architect was Sharad Pawar. Then, Ajit Pawar’s defection further limited his room for manoeuvre.


Parth Pawar is young, clipped in speech, and (say those who watch him closely) more calculating than his occasional bursts of bluntness suggest. He first drew wider notice during the Sushant Singh Rajput case, when, despite being a part of the ruling MVA government (as the undivided NCP was allied to the MVA coalition), he demanded a Central Bureau of Investigation probe - an intervention that irked Sharad Pawar, who brusquely dismissed his grandson’s views in public.


Now, Parth has taken the oath as a member of the Rajya Sabha. The ceremony signalled that the next generation of Nationalist Congress Party leadership from Ajit Pawar’s branch has arrived on the national stage.


Chief Ministerial Ambition

For Sharad Pawar, two figures complicate his long-cherished ambition of seeing his daughter, Supriya Sule, ascend to Maharashtra’s Chief Ministership: Parth and Devendra Fadnavis.


Sule is an established parliamentarian, having repeatedly won Baramati and, in 2024, defeating her sister-in-law Sunetra Pawar in a bruising and emotive contest. Yet, success in national politics does not easily translate into dominance at the state level. To become CM, she would need to pivot decisively to Maharashtra’s rough-and-tumble assembly politics by winning over legislators, cadre and voters in a far more fragmented arena. Sharad Pawar knows the climb will be steep.


He also knows that Parth’s steady rise, especially if coupled with closer ties to Fadnavis and the BJP’s central leadership, could recreate a familiar problem. For years, Ajit Pawar’s proximity to the BJP and his command over the state apparatus had constrained Sule’s ascent. In Parth, some see the outline of a similar dynamic taking shape.


This outline has become sharper after Ajit Pawar’s tragic death in a plane crash near Baramati in January. Within days, Sunetra Pawar was elevated - first as leader of the NCP legislature party, then sworn in as Deputy Chief Minister. The speed of her ascent has discomfited Sharad Pawar.


She has begun, quietly but firmly, to consolidate control over her faction. A recent visit to Delhi - noticeably without senior leaders such as Praful Patel and Sunil Tatkare - hinted at a deliberate centralisation of authority, with Parth positioned as the key interlocutor with the BJP’s high command.


The generational shift is broader still. Sunetra’s younger son, Jay Pawar, has been inducted into the party’s top decision-making body. And when Parth took a swipe at the Congress during the Baramati bypoll by calling its decision to field a candidate the start of its “downfall,” Sharad Pawar issued a pointed rebuke, stressing the need for “maturity” in political commentary. It was a rare public dressing-down within a family accustomed to managing its differences behind closed doors. Sule, for her part, responded more gently, invoking the Congress’s long national role.


Even so, Sharad Pawar is hedging. He has been nurturing Rohit Pawar, a younger MLA who has consistently taken a hard line against Fadnavis, as a potential organisational counterweight - someone who could anchor Sule’s prospects within the state.


The result is a family divided by political strategy. On one side stand Sharad Pawar and Sule, aligned with the Opposition. On the other, Sunetra and Parth Pawar, embedded within the ruling establishment and building bridges with the BJP. For now, civility prevails.


But beneath it lies a contest that is at once personal and political: a struggle over succession, influence and Maharashtra’s most coveted office. With the patriarch ageing, time is not on anyone’s side.


(The writer is a political observer. Views personal.)

Comments

bottom of page