Routed by the Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena alliance in the Lok Sabha polls and facing a difficult assembly election in little over three months, veteran politician and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar seems have taken full charge of his beleaguered organisation. Soon after 23 May when the results of the Lok Sabha elections came out, the NCP head honcho swung into action to review the results and ready the party for the assembly polls likely in October when the NCP would face a near existentialist challenge. Pawar, a three-time chief minister of Maharashtra but without a single full term, has given indications in the month since the election results that he would himself lead the NCP’s campaign in the assembly polls instead of delegating the responsibility to the younger NCP leadership including his daughter and MP Supriya Sule and nephew and former deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar.
NCP functionaries and political observers say Pawar is conscious of the “credibility deficit and disconnect" the younger generation of NCP leaders have.