Rahul tries to rope in Pawar for anti-BJP front
Seventy-six-year-old Maratha leader Sharad Pawar may once again play a major role in uniting national and regional forces and set up a broad front to halt the steady march of the BJP.
A week back, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi met Pawar and floated the idea. In his 13 years as an MP, this was Rahul's first formal meeting with Pawar. So long, it was Congress chief Sonia Gandhi who interacted with the Maharashtra veteran and president of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).
A top political source told Free Press Journal that it was Rahul Gandhi who sought a meeting with Pawar on March 10, a day before the Assembly election results were out, and told him that he alone has the stature and credibility to bring diverse political parties ranged against the BJP on one platform. The idea was to take on the saffron party and its allies head-on in the 2019 parliamentary polls.
Both apparently held a meeting on the issue lasting nearly two hours, discussing the political situation in the country since Narendra Modi came to power in 2014. The Congress and the NCP, it may be recalled, fought the recently-concluded municipal polls in some areas together.
Rahul's initiative should be seen against the backdrop of Congress general-secretary C. P. Joshi recent remark that the party can't fight Modi on its own and a broad coalition of opposition parties was required to take on the BJP. Joshi is known to be seen as close to Rahul and his statement must have had the endorsement of the Congress vice-president.
Pawar is today perhaps the only politician of stature who has good equations with the leadership of almost every party. He also knows many BJP leaders but Rahul is banking on the fact that Pawar is against the policies of the saffron party.
Pawar also has links with the corporate world and could raise funds whenever needed. The Maharashtra strongman champions the cause of farmers, an issue that Rahul Gandhi plans to exploit against Modi.