Pune: Baramati MP Supriya Sule, who is seeking a fourth term from the constituency and is locked in a high-stakes battle with her sister-in-law Sunetra Pawar, Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar’s wife, said her fight is not against a person, but an ideology.
Speaking to ThePrint between personal visits to the homes of her party’s supporters, NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) leader Sule said she is fighting her sister-in-law only because the other faction of the party now happens to be aligned with an ideology that she has always opposed.
“I never look at my opponent as an individual. My fight is about policy, my ideology. It is never personal,” Sule said. “It is an ideological battle. They are bringing a lot of politics that are hurting the country’s economy (and) farmers. The commitments they made to their country 10 years ago, they have not followed up on. I belong to a particular ideology. And today, a faction of the NCP has joined an ideology and policy makers who we don’t agree with,” she added.
She, however, added that she is not eyeing state politics and prefers parliamentary politics.
The NCP suffered a vertical split in July last year when most of the its workers rebelled against the Sharad Pawar-led party under the leadership of his nephew, Ajit Pawar.
The rebel faction, which was eventually recognised by the Election Commission and the Maharashtra Speaker as the real NCP, joined hands with the ruling Mahayuti coalition of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena in Maharashtra.
The Mahayuti has now fielded Sunetra Pawar to wrest the Pawar family bastion of Baramati from Sule.
Baramati goes to polls on 7 May in the third phase of the Lok Sabha election.
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‘Poll hasn’t impacted family relations’
Sule told ThePrint that the split in the NCP has not impacted relations within the Pawar family.
“Not at all, not from my side. Because as you get older, you are supposed to get wiser,” the Baramati MP said.
So far, neither Sule nor Sunetra have targeted or even criticised each other directly.
However, in the early phases of campaigning, Sule did launch an indirect attack on Sunetra Pawar.
At a rally in Baramati in February, Sule, in a veiled attack on Sunetra Pawar, said she does not send her husband, Sadanand Sule, to make speeches on her behalf.
“Who is going to go to parliament? Am I going to go or my husband is going to go? Any husband keen on going to parliament — my husband doesn’t go — but any husband wanting to go to parliament should sit in the canteen holding his wife’s purse,” Sule said.
But, as the campaign heats up, Sule now opts to criticise the ruling coalition as a whole.
Speaking to reporters in her constituency nearly two weeks ago, Sule described Sunetra Pawar as her “elder brother’s wife and like a mother” and blamed the BJP for forcing a family duel.
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‘Would prefer to be in the parliament’
Political watchers, as well as NCP leaders themselves have mainly named two reasons behind the split in the party — probes by investigative agencies against its leaders and the inability of the party to accommodate five-time Deputy CM Ajit Pawar’s ambitions to be the face of the party in state politics and carry forward his uncle’s legacy.
Less than a month before Ajit Pawar’s rebellion, his uncle Sharad Pawar had named Sule, along with Praful Patel, as the working president of the NCP. Patel is now with the Ajit Pawar faction.
At that time, Sharad Pawar had also put his daughter in charge of supervising the party’s responsibilities in Maharashtra, where the undivided NCP had a lion’s share of its entire national footprint. He had also made her the party’s election authority.
These responsibilities had been indicative of the octogenarian wanting to pass the baton to Sule.
In his very first rally after his rebellion, Ajit Pawar unequivocally spelt out his disenchantment, saying it was not his fault that he was born in a different womb.
Speaking to ThePrint Wednesday, Sule, however, said she prefers to be in national politics.
“I have always asked the party for a ticket in the Lok Sabha, and if you go by data, it speaks for itself. I am a high performer in the parliament. If you look at my work. The policies that we manage to implement, I am a topper in the parliament and would prefer to be there,” she said.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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