The election outcome in Mumbai and the Thane municipal corporation is a telling comment on the leadership of NCP president Sharad Pawar, who went an extra mile to forge an alliance between the Congress and NCP.
Pawar’s supposed masterstroke of bringing Shiv Sena (MP) Anand Paranjpee to the NCP in the middle of the campaign has adversely affected his own party’s electoral fortunes, evoking sympathy, as it did, in favour of Sena.
The NCP, which won 13 seats (one less than it bagged in 2007), admitted that the alliance with Congress was futile.
A senior NCP minister, on the condition of anonymity, said, “Mumbaikars lost confidence in the alliance when they saw Congress and NCP ministers locked in an intense battle against one another.”
Pawar’s intense campaign to divide the Marathi vote bank by constantly propping up MNS chief Raj Thackeray’s image and running down Shiv Sena executive president Uddhav Thackeray may have worked against the Congress, but it fetched no returns for the NCP either. The party, which was hoping to make inroads into the BMC and plant its feet firmly there for the 2014 assembly polls, appears to have been a paper tiger.
Pawar’s ploy to weaken the Shiv Sena may have helped in bringing down the latter’s tally from 85 to 75, but the NCP was given a major drubbing in strongholds like Pune and Nashik. The MNS won sizeable seats there, shaking up the unchallenged leadership of AJit Pawar (Pune) and Chhagan Bhujbal (Nashik municipal corporation) respectively.
The NCP, despite its bitter battle with the Congress (led by Suresh Kalmadi), will have to seek its help to take over the reins of the Pune corporation, despite bitter fighting with the party.
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