HT Interview: Our fight with Ajit Pawar is ideological, says Supriya Sule

It’s been a relentless 14 months for Supriya Sule. After being betrayed by her cousin Ajit Pawar, who snatched the party’s name, its electoral symbol, and most of its MLAs, to join the ruling Mahayuti alliance in Maharashtra, Sule and her father Sharad Pawar have worked hard to rebuild the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP-SP), to make it election-ready.
As the party’s working president, Sule’s first victory came when the NCP-SP won eight of the ten seats it contested in the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year. Now the battleground is much wider. But, Sule says, her party and its alliance partners in the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) will make sure “bullies” don’t win. “Someone has to fight for the truth,” she says. In an exclusive interview to Shailesh Gaikwad and Faisal Malik, Sule, 55, also insists that her fight with her cousin Ajit Pawar is not a family war but an ideological one “since he now follows the BJP-RSS ideology”. Excerpts from the interview:
The campaign is picking up but the mood is different than during the Lok Sabha elections. Back then, the MVA had set the narrative; now Mahayuti has. Don’t you think the MVA is lagging?
Before the Lok Sabha polls, we were recovering from the split. No one thought I could win in Baramati. People used to ask, ‘Where is your party, what is your symbol?’ No one thought we would win even half the seats we won. And yet we won 31 of the 48 seats in Maharashtra. I won by 1.50 lakh votes. During the Lok Sabha polls, they had written us off. The same people are now saying we will not win the assembly election. The truth is, things are certainly better now. Also, it was the BJP who used the word ‘narrative’; we were just placing facts before the people. It was BJP MPs who said they wanted to change the Constitution, not us.
With the Ladki Bahin Yojna, the ruling parties have succeeded in reaching out to the people. Haven’t they set the agenda for the elections?
They have nothing to show except the Ladki Bahin Yojna. And they woke up only after badly losing the Lok Sabha elections. If they had won more seats, they would not have remembered their sisters. The tenure of this government has been marked by large-scale unemployment, price rise and unbelievable corruption. Maharashtra has never seen this level of corruption before.
But your coalition too announced populist schemes on Wednesday. It’s almost as if there’s a competition to announce sops to woo voters.
Everybody is resorting to populist measures. It’s all over India, not just Maharashtra.
So, all parties have accepted this ‘poor governance but good politics’ formula to win elections?
Not necessarily. In the Telangana elections, the then (BRS) government promised much more than the Maharashtra’s present government is promising and, still, they didn’t win the elections. Here, populist measures have come in because the MVA did well in the Lok Sabha elections.
MVA seems to be a divided house over seat-sharing. As a result, MVA allies are contesting against each other in more than a dozen seats.
It’s happening in both the alliances. The ruling parties too are campaigning against each other. They don’t talk to each other; they call people terrorists and still campaign with them. At least we have a conscience.
This will be an extremely complex election, what with so many political parties and a large number of rebel candidates. The general opinion is that it will throw up a hung house.
I don’t think there will be a hung house. Maharashtra’s voters are very mature. Look what happened in the Lok Sabha elections. We (NCP-SP) didn’t even have a system in place. Ajit Pawar had usurped every position of power. He took away our leaders, our cadres, and even our party’s name and symbol. But the people voted for us. It’s amazing how India’s democracy works. People did what they thought was right. We (NCP-SP) won the highest number of Lok Sabha seats ever in Maharashtra. So don’t underestimate the voters.
If this election throws up a hung house, would there be any realignment of forces as happened in 2019?
I don’t believe there will be a hung assembly, so there is no question of a realignment of forces. People will vote decisively. There is too much chaos in Mahayuti.
Who is your biggest rival in this election?
The BJP.
But in 38 constituencies, you will go up against the NCP. Isn’t the Ajit Pawar-led party your main rival?
Our main rival is still the BJP because they (Ajit-led NCP) are allies of the BJP. When you vote for Ajit Pawar, it is a vote for the BJP, which is actually contesting 170-odd seats by fielding some of their people through their allies.
Ajit Pawar admitted he made a mistake by fielding his wife Sunetra against you in the Lok Sabha polls. Now, he is saying that Sharad Pawar appears to be making the same mistake by fielding his nephew Yugendra against him.
I don’t know if he fielded his wife as an ideological choice or for some other reason. We don’t speak to each other. So I have no idea in what context he said what he did – from a family point of view or ideological perspective. If it was from a family point of view, why did he say it in front of a mic, instead of addressing the family directly?
So Yugendra’s candidature is more about ideology?
Obviously. Ajit Pawar and his party’s ideology is the BJP’s ideology. Ours is the good old Congress-left of centre ideology. They are completely right wing. Ajit Pawar is clearly with the RSS and the BJP ideology.
But he is also supporting Nawab Malik and even campaigned for him.
I think it is strategic. I am not buying it. If so many candidates of Ajit have been dictated by the BJP, why would he challenge them over one candidate?
How do you view the contest between your party and Ajit Pawar’s, and the people who ditched you and teamed up with the BJP?
For me, it’s an ideological fight. I would never want to live in fear of anyone, not even if they have state agencies on their side. We all know how they (Ajit Pawar and his colleagues) have been treated in the last year and a half. They have been fighting with each other. It’s a confused alliance.
The BJP took such a strong line (on Nawab Malik). The allegation (against Malik) was made by the BJP. So the BJP has to answer. How much are they going to compromise just to win power? The BJP was an honest, straightforward party years ago. BJP 2.0 is very disappointing.
What is your comment on the revelation that R R Patil (former home minister) had signed an order for an inquiry against Ajit Pawar in the irrigation scam without the latter’s knowledge, during the Congress-NCP regime?
My whole point is, who asked for the inquiry? Devendra Fadnavis. As an opposition leader, he forced the government by keeping up a barrage of allegations. R R Patil probably thought ‘let the truth prevail’, and so he gave his nod for the inquiry. He may have thought, ‘doodh ka doodh, pani ka pani ho jayega’ and Ajit will come out with flying colours. But the home minister’s signature doesn’t matter. The final authority is the chief minister. The allegations were made by Fadnavis, the final signature of authority on the inquiry order was made by Fadnavis (when he took over as chief minister), and the same Fadnavis invited Ajit Pawar to his home and showed him the confidential file. In the first place, how did the file come to his house? If you ask me, he (Fadnavis) should be debarred from contesting polls.
Is there any possibility that Sharad Pawar and Ajit Pawar will reunite politically?
Unlikely. He (Ajit Pawar) is with the BJP and we are on the other side. It is also very vague; right now, we are in the middle of assembly elections.
How difficult is the contest for Yugendra Pawar in Baramati?
For us, every election is a fight. Unlike the BJP, we are not ‘400 paar’ types.
How many seats will the MVA win?
It is too early to say but we will form the next government comfortably.
Is the NCP (SP) still in the race for the chief minister’s position?
No. Sharad Pawar has made it absolutely clear. We are not in the race. We will see how the story unfolds.
If you have numbers, would you like to be chief minister?
That’s for the party to decide. Moreover, I am not fighting the assembly election. I also don’t get drawn into gender-based talk about being the ‘first woman chief minister of Maharashtra’. I think it is a serious job, one that comes with a lot of responsibility.
What if the MVA doesn’t come to power? Will it remain intact?
In a democracy, the opposition is as important as the rest. Of course, the MVA will survive. The INDIA alliance is doing very well. From ‘Modi Sarkar’, it has become ‘NDA Sarkar’. Nothing is permanent in life for anybody.
The tenure of the state assembly is about to end and you are still waiting for the verdict on the disqualification case in the Supreme Court.
Ideally, our party should not have been broken the way it was. Ideally, there are so many things that should not have happened. I wish the central government and the adrushya shakti (invisible force) had gone by the Constitution. Our fight with them (BJP) is purely because they are constantly against the Constitution. They think they can bully others because of the power they have, which is why someone has to fight for the truth. Clearly, we will continue to fight for the party and the symbol. But it is no longer about us; we want to make sure no one uses this as an example to hurt the Constitution and democracy.