Author: Anita Katyal

Already defeated politically by a resurgent Bharatiya Janata Party and left behind by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popular appeal, questions are now being raised about Nitish Kumar’s purported firm grip on state administration.

Last year, Nitish Kumar found himself in the eye of a storm after reports by independent researchers revealed the deplorable conditions in Bihar’s shelter homes for girls and young boys. The report provided details about how the inmates lived in deplorable conditions, were denied basics like clothing and medicines and were routinely tortured and made to work in the homes of their caregivers. The report also revealed how young girls were raped and kept locked up in inhuman conditions. The shelter homes are funded by the state administration and run by influential people who are well connected with the police, officials, and politicians.

Predictably, Nitish Kumar’s image took a beating when this scandal erupted last year. And, more recently, the Bihar chief minister was once again in the firing line after an encephalitis epidemic claimed the lives of at least 160 children in Bihar, putting the spotlight on the poor conditions in government-run hospitals. Having enjoyed a popular run as a development man, the Bihar chief minister had to face irate crowds, shouting “Nitish Kumar go back” when he visited a hospital to get a first-hand account of the encephalitis epidemic.

These developments have undoubtedly come as a rude shock for Nitish Kumar who has been widely credited with streamlining the administration and focusing on development. The Bihar chief minister was hailed for restoring the law and order situation in Bihar, improving the roads in the state and ensuring better availability of electricity and water. This was in addition to the special efforts he made to push up the enrolment level of girls in schools by providing them free bicycles, books, and uniforms. 

However, it is a different story today. Not only are people looking at Nitish Kumar in a fresh and not-so flattering light but the JD (U) leader is also feeling the heat politically from the BJP and, personally from Modi. The equations between the two allies have changed dramatically since the 2010 Bihar assembly polls when Nitish Kumar called the shots while the BJP was clearly the junior partner.

Today, it is the BJP which is the dominant political force in Bihar and, as the recent Lok Sabha election showed, Nitish Kumar now plays second fiddle to Modi as the Bihar chief minister clearly depends on the BJP leader’s charisma to woo the electorate. If the JD (U) managed to win 16 of the 17 Lok Sabha seats, it contested in alliance with the BJP, it is primarily because of Modi’s popularity.

This is a far cry from the past when Nitish Kumar shunned Modi and would even refuse to share a platform with him for fear of alienating the minorities. Unhappy with Modi’s projection as the BJP’s Prime Ministerial face in the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Nitish Kumar snapped ties with the BJP and contested on his own. However, he managed to win only two of the 40 Lok Sabha seats while the BJP’s score was 22.

The JD (U) chief subsequently joined hands with his bête noire Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad Yadav and the Congress to form a mahagathbandhan for the 2015 Bihar assembly polls. The alliance proved to be a resounding success as the BJP was trounced while the mahagathbandhan formed the state government. But, above all, Nitish Kumar’s personal stock shot up once again. He was feted and fawned upon by the opposition camp and was being positioned as its Prime Ministerial candidate.

However, differences between Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad Yadav cropped up soon and the Bihar chief minister did another somersault. He walked out of the grand alliance and, once again, teamed up with the BJP which allowed him to retain his government and improve his vote share from 16 to 22 percent.

But this is should be of little comfort to Nitish Kumar who finds himself shackled to the BJP as never before. For instance, a miffed Nitish Kumar did not join the Modi government as he was unhappy that his party was offered only one ministerial berth. But he is in no position to walk out of the alliance as he needs the BJP as a partner in next year’s Bihar assembly polls.

Nitish Kumar is attempting to chart an independent path despite his constant public declarations that he remains a member of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance. For instance, the JD (U) leader has publicly disagreed with the BJP on the triple talaq Bill and its Kashmir policy. At the same time, Nitish Kumar is trying to expand his party’s footprint and play a larger national role in the future by emerging as a leader of the non-Congress, non-BJP parties.

But it may too late for Nitish Kumar to reclaim his lost position. He had an excellent opportunity to lead the opposition bloc in the run-up to the recent Lok Sabha election but he squandered it away by jumping ship. The Bihar chief minister’s tendency to change allies at his convenience has shown him up as an unreliable partner. His best bet now is to continue his alliance with the BJP even as a junior partner.

Even as the Congress is yet to recover from a drubbing in the recent Lok Sabha election, the party is staring at a major challenge in the coming assembly polls in Haryana, Maharashtra, and Jharkhand which were swept by the Bharatiya Janata Party in the general election.

Haryana is a classic case of how the Congress has frittered away its chances in a state where the party has a presence, strong leaders as well as a social base. Instead of building on its strengths, the Congress has handed over the state to the BJP which was never a major player here. In fact, the BJP always depended on an alliance with O.P. Chautala’s Indian National Lok Dal to mark its presence here.

However, the electoral landscape in Haryana has undergone a sea change since 2014 when the BJP swept the Lok Sabha and the assembly polls, edging out both the Congress and the INLD. It would have been expected that five years later, anti-incumbency against chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar would pave the way for the Congress to stage a comeback. But the Modi wave and Khattar’s own unblemished reputation ensured that the BJP won all the ten Lok Sabha seats in the recent general election and looks set for yet another resounding victory in the assembly polls later this year.

It is clear the roles have now been reversed. While the BJP is now the dominant political force, the Congress is on the margins now. If anything, the Congress has only itself to blame for its sad state in Haryana. Bitter infighting in the Congress state unit, a non-existent party organization and a new caste dynamic has ensured that the grand old party poses little or no challenge to the BJP.

The Congress party’s wash-out in the Lok Sabha should have served as a wake-up call to the squabbling state leaders and it would have been expected that they would sink their differences and work on putting up a united fight in the coming assembly elections. But they have learned no lessons from the party’s disastrous performance in the last election as they continue to trade charges against each other.

In fact, the infighting has become worse as witnessed during a recent internal meeting called by Congress general secretary Ghulam Nabi Azad to plan and strategize for the upcoming assembly poll. The proceedings degenerated into a bitter slanging match as state party president Ashok Tanwar and former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda blamed each other for the party’s disastrous electoral result. Hooda essentially wants the state unit to be entrusted to him so that he can accommodate his supporters in the distribution of tickets and also be projected as the chief ministerial candidate.

Matters have come to such a pass that even a senior and seasoned leader like Azad has not been able to quell the infighting. Both Tanwar and Hooda draw their confidence from their proximity to Congress president Rahul Gandhi. And given the current leadership crisis at the top, Hooda and Tanwar are obviously feeling sufficiently emboldened to defy any attempt at disciplining them.

Hooda may be flexing his muscles but his defeat in the recent Lok Sabha election from a Jat-dominated seat has weakened his position and his claims to be projected as the party’s chief ministerial face. What is worse, his son Deependra Hooda also lost from Rohtak, which has been the family’s stronghold since the fifties.

The defeat of the Hoodas is not only a personal loss for the father-son duo but it has also put the focus back on the sharpening divide between the dominant Jat community and the non-Jats in Haryana. The Congress woke up to this harsh reality earlier this year when the party’s prominent Jat face – the party’s chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala- was handed a bitter defeat in the Jind bye-election. The Congress had hoped to benefit from the anti-incumbency against the Khattar government but failed to see that the chief minister’s popularity had not dimmed and that he had succeeded in consolidating the non-Jat vote in the BJP’s favour.    

The violent Jat agitation which rocked  Haryana in 2016 and the open preference shown by Hooda for his clansmen during his ten-year tenure as chief minister had alienated the other castes which had been feeling neglected by the Congress. In fact, the BJP’s victory in the 2014 Lok Sabha election was attributed both to the Modi wave and the coming together of the non-Jats in favour of the saffron party. It was the same story in 2019.

The shifting caste dynamic in Haryana has forced the Congress to rethink its strategy of relying on a Jat face. Till now, the party was convinced that it was essential to appease the Jat community but it now realizes that it also needs non-Jat leaders to woo the other castes. The Congress is sorely missing a leader like Bhajan Lal who had succeeded in keeping the non-Jats in the party fold. However, it is not an easy task as Hooda has dug his heels in and has the potential to create further dissension in the party’s state unit if he does not have his way. 

There are no easy answers for the Congress. While the party is still struggling to find an amicable solution to this problem, the BJP is predictably upbeat after its massive victory in the Lok Sabha election. Since the assembly poll in Haryana comes barely six months after the general election, the state tends to vote for the same party in both elections. In contrast to the Congress, which is a house divided with no clear leader, the BJP has found a winner in Khattar who has emerged as a leader in his own right. He is known to be honest and upright and has also delivered on governance.

It is over two weeks since its president Rahul Gandhi took responsibility for the humiliating electoral defeat and declared that he intended to step down as Congress chief but there is no end to the uncertainty which has gripped the party. Congress cadre is still to recover from the twin shocks of a second consecutive debacle in the Lok Sabha election followed by Rahul Gandhi’s refusal to reconsider his decision.

The Congress Working Committee, the party’s highest decision-making body, has rejected Rahul Gandhi’s offer of resignation and has instead authorized him to restructure and overhaul the party organization at all levels.

However, this authorization has not cut any ice with Rahul Gandhi who is in no mood to retract his offer of resignation. As a result, a leaderless and directionless party is floundering while its members are running around like a headless chicken.

A number of senior leaders have sought an appointment with Rahul Gandhi but to little avail. Heavily dependent on the Nehru-Gandhi family, the Congress is yet to come to terms with an outsider as party president. The party is convinced that only a family member can keep the Congress united and that anyone other than a Nehru-Gandhi will not be acceptable to all sections in the party and such an appointment could intensify internal factional battles.

For instance, any move to replace Rahul Gandhi with Jyotiraditya Scindia would be opposed by senior Madhya Pradesh leaders like Kamal Nath and Digivjaya Singh. Similarly, Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot will resist the appointment of his deputy Sachin Pilot as Congress chief. Well aware of the problems they face in finding Rahul Gandhi’s replacement, senior leaders are suggesting that Rahul Gandhi be persuaded to continue as Congress president and that he should be assisted by a number of working presidents to make way for collective leadership.

As the party mulls various options, it is becoming increasingly clear that Rahul Gandhi and the Congress brass have to act swiftly to put an end to the ongoing rift in the party.

But if the party fails to resolve its leadership crisis at the earliest, the situation will  get progressively worse as demoralized workers are bound to jump ship and look around for better options. As it is, internal bickering in the party’s various state units have become a norm as senior leaders are not shying away from taking potshots at each other in public. It is time someone reined in the battling leaders and strengthened the party organization so that it is in a position to recover some lost ground. It is not an easy task as the Congress has been reduced to a bit player in large parts of India while the BJP has emerged as the country’s central political force.

While a triumphant BJP has already started work on the forthcoming assembly polls, the Congress remains caught up with its own problems which are only multiplying. For instance, the battle between Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh and his bête noire Navjot Singh Sidhu are out in the open. Emboldened after the party’s  reasonably good performance in Punjab, Amarinder Singh stripped Sidhu of the local bodies department on the ground that he had been remiss in the handling of his duties which was responsible for the party’s poor electoral performance in the state’s urban areas. Sidhu, who has been sulking ever since his wife was denied a Lok Sabha ticket, has also gone public with his grievances against the chief minister on several occasions. The cricketer-turned-politician maintained he was being singled out in spite of “collective responsibility”.

Similar reports are coming in from other states. In Haryana, the party’s state president Ashok Tanwar and former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda were involved in a slanging match at an internal party meeting called recently to analyse the reasons for the party’s rout in Haryana and discuss future corrective measures. Needless to say, the meeting was inconclusive.

In Rajasthan, chief minister Ashok Gehlot and his deputy Sachin Pilot are constantly at loggerheads and this showed in election results in the state. The Congress failed to win a single Lok Sabha seat in the desert state barely four months after it defeated the Bharatiya Janata Party in the assembly polls.   

The Congress legislature party in Telangana has been reduced to a rump after 12 legislators walked out recently and joined the ruling Telangana Rashtriya Samithi. And in Maharashtra, senior Congress leader and former leader of opposition in the assembly Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil switched loyalties to the BJP amidst reports that several more MLAs are also set to join the saffron party.

The list of issues which need to be attended to is endless but clearly the Congress is showing no urgency in dealing with them.

He was once known for his jet setting ways as he roamed the world, fraternising with the likes of Mick Jagger and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. An occasional visitor to India, the suave and sophisticated Naveen Patnaik, author, and son of the legendary Odia leader Biju Patnaik was an unlikely candidate for a career in politics.

Consequently, when Naveen Patnaik, also known as Pappu, arrived in Odisha in 1997 to claim his father’s legacy, no one gave him an outside chance. His friends and party colleagues were sure that he would not last long as he was just not cut out for the hurly-burly of the political world. Besides, he had a fleeting acquaintance with his home state and could not even speak Odia. But Naveen Patnaik surprised everyone as he lost no time in reinventing himself. He left behind the world of glamour, donned a white kurta pajama and set himself up as the new leader of the Biju Janata Dal in Bhubaneswar.

The rest, as they say, is history. The novice politician has since outwitted veterans in the field and demonstrated amazing staying power and an uncanny knack for realpolitik.

Naveen Patnaik won his fifth consecutive term in office last month, becoming one of the few longest serving chief ministers of the country. Described variously as enigmatic, inscrutable and reclusive, Patnaik’s opponents are mystified how he has managed to stave off anti-incumbency and retained his popularity ratings even after close to two decades in office. Scams and scandals have failed to dent Patnaik’s credibility, much to the chagrin of his political rivals.

Patnaik’s latest electoral victory is particularly memorable as he was up against the Bharatiya Janata Party’s powerful and rampaging election machine. Ever since it came to power at the Centre, the saffron party has been making a concerted effort to expand its footprint in the Eastern states. Though it made spectacular gains in West Bengal in the latest Lok Sabha polls, the BJP was effectively checkmated by Patnaik in Odisha. This is despite the fact that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP president Amit Shah and a galaxy of leaders descended on the state to run a high-decibel campaign which often degenerated into personal attacks. For the past several years now, BJP leaders have been running a whisper campaign about Patnaik’s indifferent health and weakening grip over his party and the government essentially to confuse the BJD ranks and the electorate. But it clearly failed in its mission.

Naveen Patnaik ran up a huge winning score in the assembly poll, which was held along with the Lok Sabha election. The BJD raced ahead of its political rivals, winning 112 of the 147 assembly seats in Odisha, dropping only five seats from its 2014 strength. The BJP managed to win only 23 seats though it had set itself an ambitious target of 120.

However, there is no denying that the BJP has made inroads in Odisha, having displaced the Congress as the main opposition party in this coastal state. The saffron party may have lagged behind in the assembly but it managed to increase its tally from one to eight in the Lok Sabha while the BJD came down to twelve from the 20 it had won in the 2014 general election.

So what is the secret of Patnaik’s success? The low-key and understated Odisha chief minister, who has been embraced by the people as “our Naveen”, has reached out to all sections of society through an array of government schemes and projects. Patnaik is a runaway success with the rural poor thanks to the distribution of cheap rice, free bicycles to girls to his latest Krushak Assistance for Livelihood and Income Augmentation (KALIA) scheme promising money to farmers through direct benefit transfer. At the same time, he has also endeared himself to Odisha’s growing middle class which has been a huge beneficiary of the state’s mining boom. His party leaders maintain he may not be fluent in Odia but he listens to the people and understands them and that, they said, is more important than talking down to them.

Realizing that he was up against a ruthless and determined opponent in the recent Lok Sabha polls this time, Patnaik shed his aloof image and became more vocal and visible. He began touring the state from last December and made a special effort to strike up conversations with people at street corners. He also made a conscious effort to woo women with the promise of greater economic support for self-help groups led by them. His quiet manner and dignified responses during the poll campaign stood out in a stark contrast to the loud and personal attacks mounted against him by the BJP.

But Patnaik’s gentle exterior is, at best, a façade for he can be ruthless when it comes to protecting his turf and his image. He does not trust people, does not allow anyone to come too close and has no compunction in dumping even senior leaders and officials if Patnaik is convinced they are getting out of line or becoming too ambitious.   

The BJD chief makes it a point to change more than half of his sitting legislators during elections to guard against anti-incumbency and keeps moving around his Cabinet ministers like pawns on a chessboard to ensure they do not become complacent or lax. For instance, Patnaik did not think twice before throwing out his party’s high-profile MP Jay Panda, who was once considered close to him. Panda joined the BJP on election-eve but lost his seat. In earlier years, Patnaik had dispensed with his political mentors Bijay Mohapatra and Dilip Ray, who founded the BJD, as he believed they were planning a coup against him.

Pappu has obviously come a long way from his globe-trotting days.

Over the past five years, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party ran a sustained campaign against dynastic politics to discredit Congress president Rahul Gandhi. In the 2014 Lok Sabha poll campaign, Prime Minister Narendra Modi would refer to him with derision as shehzaada  (royal scion) while this election was pitched as a battle between “naamdars and kaamdars”  to drive home the point that the Congress leader’s only claim to fame was that he belonged to the Nehru-Gandhi family.

And when Rahul Gandhi was defeated in his family stronghold Amethi, a gleeful BJP lost no time in declaring that the verdict proved that the electorate had rejected political dynasties. Former finance minister Arun Jaitley posted a blog on Facebook, saying that the “dynastic character” of the Congress was responsible for the party’s decline while pointing out that the BJP is one of the three “prominent non-dynastic parties in India”. One proverb that immediately comes to one’s mind is: those who live in glass houses…

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There is no doubt that the Congress has, over the years, has become synonymous with dynastic politics but the other political parties are far from free from this phenomenon, the BJP included. A study by Gilles Vernier and Christophe Jaffrelot shows that 30 percent of the new parliamentarians are from political families. The Congress has topped this list but the BJP is not far behind while regional parties have evolved into family enterprises. 

As the country’s oldest political party, which has been helmed by four generations of the Nehru- Gandhi family over several decades, the Congress comes in for greater notice and is, therefore, singled out for criticism. And when the dynast fails to deliver, as in the case of Rahul Gandhi, the attack is even sharper as is evident from the tone of Jaitley’s blog post.  
The BJP’s dynasts have escaped public attention primarily because they are not in top leadership positions. But this is explained by the fact that the BJP is a relatively younger party and, it started climbing the growth charts in the nineties. The party’s dynasts are still younger and will take time to climb to the top.

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In this Lok Sabha, the BJP’s benches will be occupied by long-term MP Maneka Gandhi who won the Sultanpur seat in Uttar Pradesh and her son Varun Gandhi who now represents the Pilibhit constituency earlier held by his mother.

Railway minister Piyush Goyal, whose father was once the BJP treasurer and mother a three-time state legislator, also belongs to the club of political inheritors. Anurag Thakur, the new sports minister, and four-time MP  from Hamirpur is the son of former Himachal Pradesh chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal. Then there is Poonam Mahajan, the daughter of the late BJP leader Pramod Mahajan, who returns to the Lok Sabha for the second time. She is joined by Pritam Munde, daughter of the late Gopinath Munde, who is also into her second term in Parliament.

Dushyant Singh, son of former Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje, is back in the Lok Sabha, having won the  Jhalawar-Baran seat in the desert state. Rita Bahuguna Joshi, daughter of the late veteran Congress leader H.N.Bahuguna is the new dynast in the BJP. She joined the party only a few years ago.

If it is anyone’s argument that this election rejected dynastic politics, they could not be further from the truth. Though it is true that many political heirs like Rahul Gandhi, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Jitin Prasada and Sushmita Dev, have lost, dynasts in both national and regional parties are flourishing. In the Congress Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kamal Nath’s son Nakul Nath was the sole winner from the state, former finance minister P.Chidambaram’s son Karthi Chidambaram’s son has also made it to the Lok Sabha as has Gaurav Gogoi, son of former Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi. Congress ally Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar’s daughter Supriya Sule retained the family fiefdom Baramati, which was first won by her father in 1967. Pawar now sits in the Rajya Sabha.

The big regional winners – Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik, DMK’s M.K.Stalin and Jaganmohan Reddy of YSR Congress Party, are all products of political families. Patnaik, who returned as chief minister for a record fifth term, is the son of the late Odisha’s political giant Biju Patnaik, Stalin took over the party after the death of his father, the legendary M.Karunanidhi, and S. Jaganmohan Reddy is the son of former Andhra Pradesh chief minister S.Rajasekhara Reddy.

While Reddy has ousted the Chandrababu Naidu government in Andhra Pradesh, Stalin has swept the Lok Sabha poll in his home state Tamil Nadu while his sister Kanimozhi will be among the party’s representatives in the Lok Sabha.

Then there is the father-son duo, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party, who will be among the five MPs from their party in this Lok Sabha. The Shiromani Akali Dal will be represented by party president Sukhbir Singh Badal and his wife Harsimrat Kaur, also known as the power couple.

BJP alliance partner Lok Janshakti Party is yet another family-owned shop. While its senior leader Ram Vilas Paswan has moved to the Rajya Sabha, his son Chirag Paswan is back in the Lok Sabha for the second time.

Dynasts argue that it is unfair to criticize them as they have been democratically elected by the people. They also argue that they have earned their spurs, having worked hard to get where they are today.

However, there is no denying that they all have a head start over other political newcomers. With elections becoming an increasingly expensive affair, they have the advantage of having access to their family wealth, which immediately pushes them in a different league. Belonging to a known political family also means their name has an instant recall value. All this inputs into building a political dynasty.

Four years ago, Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh was appointed president of the Congress party’s state unit but only after he fought hard to get this position which put him in line for the CM’s post.

It was only after he threatened to revolt that the Congress leadership reluctantly relented and brought him back as party chief though the high command was not happy at being browbeaten into taking a decision.

Singh could afford to exert pressure on the party as he had more than proved himself when he defeated Bharatiya Janata Party’s senior leader Arun Jaitley in the 2014 Lok Sabha election to win the prestigious Amritsar seat in spite of a Modi wave.

Amarinder Singh stood vindicated yet again when he went on to oust the ten-year-led Shiromani Akali Dal government in 2017 to form a Congress government in Punjab.

And today, Singh is truly the king as he has successfully fended off the Modi upsurge once again by winning eight of the 13 Lok Sabha seats in Punjab, a gain of five seats from the last general election. This is despite the fact that Singh has been in power for nearly two years after which one would expect a sitting chief minister to face some anti-incumbency.

In fact, Singh is the only chief minister who has delivered for the party while Kamal Nath, Bhupesh Baghel and Ashok Gehlot, his counterparts in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Rajasthan, failed miserably in keeping the BJP at bay.

The Congress performance has strengthened Amarinder Singh’s hold over the party in Punjab while the Congress is looking at him with renewed respect with some even suggesting that he deserved to be made party president.

As in the case of 2014, Punjab bucked the national trend once again in this election and chose to vote differently from the rest of the country. The state remained impervious to Modi’s charms even though in neighboring Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, it was Modi, Modi all the way.

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While the Congress bettered its score this time, the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Admi Party, which had stunned everyone by bagging four seats in the last Lok Sabha election has been reduced to one this time and the Shiromani Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party combine won four seats between them. For the Akalis, it was a second shock after its humiliating defeat in the 2017 assembly poll as it could only ensure the victory of its party president Sukhbir Singh Badal and his wife Harsimrat Singh Badal while the remaining ten party candidates fell by the wayside.

For his part, Amarinder Singh did not allow the poll campaign to become Modi-centric. He successfully used the BJP’s high-pitch campaign on nationalism post-Pulwama to his advantage by lending unequivocal support to the government’s action in Balakot. He made a thundering speech in the assembly, sent out a chilling warning to Pakistan, and urged Modi to see that the killing of Indian soldiers and citizens was avenged. Singh’s move to present himself as a true nationalist carried credibility as he has served in the Indian Army. Besides, warmongering does not go down well in Punjab as the people point out that as a border state, they are the first to be hit in case of military action.

Singh pushed the Akalis on the defensive by successfully playing the Panthic card in the election. He constantly attacked the Badals by periodically referring to the desecration of the Guru Granth Sahib in 2015 and subsequent police firing at protesters as well as the pardon granted to Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram in a blasphemy case. Singh set up a commission to inquire into the sacrilege issue which held that the Badal administration was complicit in shielding those responsible for committing the unholy act. Finding themselves on the backfoot, the Badal family offered an apology at the Golden Temple. Though the Badals won their seats, the issue continues to haunt the party.

Amarinder Singh was also helped in his campaign by the fact that his opponents were unable to put up an effective fight as both the Shromani Akali Dal and the Aam Admi Party have been wracked by internal divisions. The Badals found themselves in the dock after the party’s rout in the 2017 assembly polls when several old timers walked out to set up shop on their own. The Lok Sabha result shows that the party has yet to recover from its last defeat.

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The virtual unraveling of the Aam Admi Party also made Singh’s job easier. The newbie party had caught the imagination of the people of Punjab in 2014 when it won four Lok Sabha seats. Though the party did not fare as well as it was expected to do in the last assembly election, it did manage to beat the Akalis to emerge as the principal opposition party. But since then, the party has witnessed several departures with its state chief Sukhpal Singh Khaira setting up his own party and two of its MLAs joining the Congress.

Consequently, the party which was seen as a rising star in Punjab, has lost all credibility. It managed to bag only one Lok Sabha seat with Gurudas Mann retaining Sangrur.  The Congress snatched the remaining three seats from the Aam Admi Party.

Describing the job of a Prime Minister, a former minister once remarked that he is like the CEO of a company who presides over a board of directors. “The important thing is to pick the right people to serve on the board,” he added.

There is all-round agreement that going by this job description, Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar will prove to be an ideal candidate for the country’s top post. Pawar’s supporters never tire of pointing out            that the NCP chief comes with a wealth of experience, a knack for spotting talent and bringing out the best in his colleagues and officials.

The veteran leader has been in politics for over 50 years, winning his first election to the Maharashtra assembly in 1967 and subsequently went on to become the youngest chief minister of his home state at the age of 38 years. He understands the intricacies of electoral politics and has been an able administrator, having proved himself both as a chief minister and a Central minister.

Pawar is a four-time chief minister of Maharashtra, was the defence minister in the Narasimha Rao government and held the agriculture portfolio in the Manmohan Singh-led United Progressive Alliance government.

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Pawar is regarded as a wise and mature politician, whose advice is taken seriously. It was a known fact that former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh valued him as a Cabinet colleague and relied on him for his inputs on key government decisions. Unlike other UPA allies, Pawar did not throw too many tantrums but, nevertheless, the senior leader managed to have his way with his quiet and understated manner.

Lately, Congress president Rahul Gandhi has been consulting Pawar as the Maratha strongman has stepped in to help weld the disparate opposition parties into a cohesive and viable anti-BJP coalition.

The NCP chief is considered a good choice for this task since he has cultivated friends across the political spectrum during his long innings in public life. His political clout was on display during his 75^th birthday celebrations in 2015. The mega show at Delhi’s Vigyan Bhavan was attended by a galaxy of political leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former Congress president Sonia Gandhi, perhaps the first time that these two leaders shared a stage.

It was then said that the elaborate celebrations, held in Delhi and his Lok Sabha constituency Baramati, had been planned to underline that the Maratha strongman has a national profile even though his party’s presence is limited to Maharashtra and he is out of power. It was also whispered then that Pawar had an eye on the Rashtrapati Bhavan as he believed he had the necessary seniority and stature for the President’s post.

Moving on from there, Pawar today is being mentioned as the proverbial dark horse who could make the cut for the Prime Minister’s post in the event that the opposition camp gets the requisite numbers to form the next government. Pawar, it is said, can emerge  as a consensus candidate as the  regional satraps would prefer him to Rahul Gandhi.

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Besides the fact that the NCP chief has the qualifications and the temperament to run a government and manage  fractious coalition partners, Pawar (with his nine-odd MPs) also poses no threat to the other regional parties who have to constantly look over their  shoulders to protect their turf. Another big plus in Pawar’s favour are his ties contacts with the corporate world.

On the flip side, Pawar has acquired a reputation of being untrustworthy. His motives for befriending someone or taking a particular decision are generally eyed with suspicion as there is always a nagging feeling that his moves are driven by a hidden agenda. After all, Pawar had walked out of the Congress in 1978 after breaking up with his political mentor Y.B.Chavan. He was brought back to the party by Rajiv Gandhi but was lost no time in pitching for the Prime Minister’s post after the Congress leader’s assassination in 1991. He was, however, outmaneuvered by the wily P.V.Narasimha Rao. He again lost to veteran leader Sitaram Kesari when he attempted to wrest the presidentship of the Congress party.

Realising that there was little possibility of his upward mobility in the Congress once Sonia Gandhi took over as party president, Pawar raised a banner of revolt in protest against her foreign origins. He was then shown the door. Pawar went on to form the NCP but he met with limited success in his home state and was forced to stitch up an alliance with the Congress in Maharashtra when neither party could muster enough numbers to form a government on its own. The two parties ran a coalition government for three terms. A chastened Pawar subsequently accepted the olive branch extended to him by Sonia Gandhi and joined the United Progressive Alliance in 2004. It proved to be a smart move as he was drafted as a agriculture minister when the Congress-led UPA won the 2004 Lok Sabha election.

Lately, however, there appears to be an erosion in Pawar’s authority within his own party. This was evident when the NCP chief first announced in March that he would contest the Lok Sabha election but was pressured to make way for his grand-nephew following fierce infighting in the family. Pawar has denied rumours of any rift and has led a tireless campaign in the ongoing election in a bid to re-establish his authority within the party and to send out a message that he remains the NCP’s undisputed leader.

Despite Pawar’s best efforts, these developments have led to speculation that Pawar’s weakening grip over his family and party will make it difficult for him to pitch for the Prime Minister’s post. Conversely, there is also a view that his weakness may yet prove to be his strength.