Were Stanley Kubrick’s classic cold war satire Dr. Strangelove to be set in Baramati, it may well be titled Mr. Pawar: or how I learned to stop worrying and love my nephew.
As the 83-year-old Sharad Pawar rattles sabres with his mercurial nephew, Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, for control of Baramati (which goes to polls on May 7) and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), the paterfamilias of the Pawar clan and Maharashtra’s politics faces the toughest contest of his life.
Yet this soap opera of a contest, which has Mr. Sharad Pawar’s daughter, Supriya Sule (the Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi’s candidate and incumbent Baramati MP) pitted against Mr. Ajit’s wife Sunetra Pawar (the ruling Mahayuti’s candidate), is leavened with high political comedy which has seen bitter foes turning into overnight friends across the six Assembly segments in the Baramati Lok Sabha.
