Do The Math Now: Implications Of Ajit Pawar’s Monsoon 'Maskirovka'

When Russian mercenary boss Yevgeny Prighozin rebelled against his own side last month for a day, before meekly backing off, some analysts said this was actually a Maskirovka – a ploy of deception – run by Moscow to move fresh troops closer to the north-eastern Ukrainian border without raising the alarm.

Ajit Pawar’s monsoon Maskirovka had been under composition for a lot longer, and is at least as momentous as Prighozin’s move, if not more. 

Today, he and a number of legislators from the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) left the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition (consisting of the Congress, Uddhav Thackeray, and the NCP) to join the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition government of Chief Minister Eknath Shinde (comprising of the Shiv Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)).

Chief Minister Shinde put the day’s surprising developments into words thus: ‘A double engine Sarkar under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has now become a triple engine Sarkar”

The implications are both numerous and tectonic.

First, it affects opposition prospects at every rung of the electoral ladder. 

As it is, the Shiv Sena and the BJP were in a comfortable position to take on the Thackerays in Mumbai corporation elections which are already overdue. Now, the question is: how many Thackeray candidates will be able to retain their deposits?

Second, assembly elections are due in Maharashtra next year. With Ajit Pawar and most of the NCP legislators on board, along with many of the party’s district bosses, the NDA should comfortably sweep the state. 

The implication is that the Congress, which was already coming apart at the seams, may now suffer an exodus, as the futility of contesting on an MVA ticket becomes increasingly apparent.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, Ajit Pawar’s move to the NDA sets the BJP and its allies up superbly for the 2024 general elections. 

With a whopping 48 Lok Sabha seats, Maharashtra is the second largest state in the country, behind Uttar Pradesh which has 80. Technically speaking, now, this expanded NDA could win all 48 seats in the state.

Fourth, it leaves opposition unity, and their hopes of winning the next general elections in complete tatters, because Maharashtra was the totem around which they wound their dreams, when they met in Patna late last month. 

It was a different mood then, with the NCP and Thackeray in attendance. Rahul Gandhi even urged journalists to ‘do the math’, on how easily a united opposition would win a majority in 2024. Well, with this debacle, it’s up to him to do some fresh math, because chemistry isn’t part of the equation any longer.

Fifth, dynasts like Aaditya Thackeray and Pawar’s daughter, Supriya Sule, will be hard pressed to retain their respective seats in the legislature and parliament. 

In 2019, Sule won the Pawar family’s bastion of Baramati Lok Sabha seat by a margin of 12 per cent. This is not a thumping victory by any yardstick, and means that she will lose if her candidacy suffers a vote erosion of just six per cent.

Similarly, Aaditya Thackeray won Worli assembly seat easily in 2019 because the NCP put up a weak candidate, and the BJP and Shiv Sena votes were with him then. That is not the case today.

Sixth, opposition finances will be hit hard because they were banking on the NCP’s deep pockets to fund a significant part of the campaigns at both the national and state levels. 

Worse, Praful Patel, who was the NCP’s main funds-organizer in Delhi, has gone along with Ajit Pawar. So, the impact is both electoral and financial.

Seventh, this move now permits the BJP to grow in Maharashtra – something which it had not been able to do as long as it was in alliance with the Thackerays. It also gives the BJP some cushion against any future dissonance with Eknath Shinde and the Shiv Sena.

Eighth, and very importantly, the BJP now has its holy grail – a good deal more support from the Maratha community, the bulk of which had stayed loyal to Sharad Pawar for decades. This breakthrough will resonate in BJP victories for many years to come.

Ninth, Ajit Pawar’s alliance with the NDA makes the Muslim vote irrelevant in the state. Secularist-style identity politics, minority appeasement, and old tactics of using the bloc Muslim vote to win tight contests have now been made redundant. And putting salt on secular wounds, a Muslim MLA of the NCP was sworn in to the Shinde cabinet today. What will the opposition howl about now?

And finally, tenth, it leaves Sharad Pawar, founder and head of the NCP, out in the cold. 

It is a sad political ending for a man who was renowned for being politically astute and a master strategist. That’s why they called him the wily Maratha.

But, in the end, he has lost. A monsoon Maskirovka by his long-suffering nephew, Ajit Pawar, leaves Sharad Pawar humiliated and isolated in his dotage, with no political legacy to pass on.