Trial by fire for Supriya Sule

The NCP (SP) working president may get some flak for her party’s poor results but her position is likely to remain unshaken as Sharad Pawar’s heir

Mumbai: Two days after the results, Supriya Sule put out a message on her social media accounts accepting the people’s mandate and promising to continue working for the state. It was an uncharacteristically somber response from someone whose lively, people-friendly persona is evident through the photographs and selfies she keeps posting numerous times in a day. That she is shaken and disappointed is evident. But the bigger question for political watchers is what this mandate means for her future as the party’s leader.

While the Lok Sabha elections were the first polls fought with Sule as the working president and Jayant Patil as the Maharashtra chief, her stamp on the party’s choice of candidates was obvious and clear only during the state polls. While party leaders maintain that she did not directly influence decisions on the candidates, a few party office bearers accept that a few candidates such as Fahad Ahmad were her picks. Does that mean she failed to sense the mood of the voters?

Her party is still divided on the issue of leadership. Anish Gawande, national spokesperson of the NCP (SP) states that Sule continues to be “hugely popular among the party cadre”. For those who’ve worked with her, she’s known to be straight-forward, approachable and hard working. She gracefully accepts party workers’ and visitors’ requests for photographs and even posts them on her social media pages. Not one to stick to orchestrated photos, she records candid moments and even gives her followers a peek into her family trips and celebrations. All this gives her a touch of approachability.

Sule is an urban, fluent-in-English leader of a party that’s built its fortunes in rural Maharashtra.

That’s where the mismatch is, say her detractors. A party worker living in the outskirts of Pune says that she lacks the understanding of local issues and intricacies of rural politics and hence the empathy that should show in a political leader’s interactions. The touch with the masses that Ajit Pawar has is something that Sule lacks.

While the party is yet to go into serious introspection mode, there are two lines of thought within the NCP (SP). Some say that Sule will take full control of the party aided by Jayant Patil and Rohit Pawar as the third-generation member of the Pawar family. Sule is already building her own team with the party, a team of workers that will be loyal to her. Then there are others who believe that a rapprochement between NCP and NCP (SP) is the need of the hour, making way for Ajit Pawar to lead the party in Maharashtra. Though this option doesn’t seem plausible for now.

“We live in an age of personality politics. The NCP will have more value when a ‘Pawar’ leads it so Supriya Sule is the party’s best bet for the president’s position,” says a party member who didn’t want to be named. He concedes that while Jayant Patil may be more efficient and experienced, he lacks the charm and pull of a ‘Pawar.’

For now, Sule is firmly in her seat as the NCP (SP)’s working president. Her task is tougher now –to re-think the party’s strategies, change the target areas and build a new leadership while keeping her flock together.