Mumbai: On 17 June, 1999, the undivided Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) adopted its constitution and appointed its first set of office bearers. The meeting, held at Mumbai’s Shanmukhananda Hall, had started at 10.10 am.
And that is how the party’s symbol came to be a clock, showing the time 10.10 am.
On Tuesday, the Election Commission of India (ECI) gave the symbol to the faction of the NCP led by Ajit Pawar, Baramati MLA and nephew of party founder Sharad Pawar, following a vertical split in the party. The following day, it also gave the Sharad Pawar-led faction a new interim name — NCP – Sharadchandra Pawar.
The NCP suffered the split when Ajit Pawar walked out of the party with a majority of MLAs in tow, rebelling against his uncle. He joined hands with the ruling coalition of the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and became a deputy CM in the Maharashtra government.
The clock holds significance for both factions of the NCP, leaders from both factions told ThePrint. For the Sharad Pawar faction, the clock is a personification of their leader himself. For the Ajit Pawar faction, the clock stands for what it did in 1999 when the undivided NCP was launched after a split from the Congress. It signifies the changing political times, leaders from the Ajit Pawar faction say.
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Indicator of political timing
When Sharad Pawar formed the NCP in 1999, after walking out of the Congress, he originally wanted the symbol of a ‘charkha’ (spinning wheel) to reflect the party’s Gandhian ideological roots. However, the ECI rejected the request and allotted the party a clock instead.
Leaders from the Sharad Pawar faction said that while the clock was not the party’s first choice for a symbol, there couldn’t have been a symbol that describes the octogenarian’s personality better.
An NCP MLA who wished to not be named said, Sharad Pawar has always been one of the rare politicians who “respects” time.
“He uses every waking minute productively. All his appointments run on time. He is never late to a commitment. He values his own time and respects the other person’s time too,” the MLA said.
His political timing has also always been accurate, leaders from his faction say.
“Pawar saheb has always known when to take a political decision and shake things up,” a functionary from the Pawar-led NCP said.
In his over five-decade-long political career, Sharad Pawar has often been hailed as the king of coalitions in Maharashtra. He has fluidly changed friends and foes according to the political realities of the day. He had uprooted Maharashtra’s very first coalition experiment by replacing it with his own.
In 1978, the Congress (I) comprising the supporters of former PM Indira Gandhi and a breakaway faction, Congress (Urs) headed by D. Devraj Urs, had formed a post-poll coalition government in the state with Vasantdada Patil as the CM. Relations between the two sides were choppy and within months, a rebel group led by Sharad Pawar toppled the fragile alliance.
Much later, in 2019, the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), too, was his creation. The MVA is a coalition of the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), the Sharad Pawar-led faction of the NCP and the Congress.
Leaders from the Ajit Pawar-led NCP argue that the clock being indicative of the correctness of a leader’s political timing can be argued in case of nephew Pawar as well.
‘Same clock, new time’
A functionary from the Ajit Pawar-led NCP who switched sides with the Baramati MLA from the Sharad Pawar-led party said that when the NCP was formed in 1999, leaders were popularising the clock symbol with a sentiment, ‘Navin vel, navin survat’ (a new time, a new beginning).
The NCP’s political fortunes surged quickly. The symbol reached every household of Maharashtra, and the party tasted electoral success and three consecutive terms in power in the state in a coalition with the Congress.
However, in the 15 years of its existence, the party’s performance has been rangebound. The NCP’s electoral presence in Maharashtra and the Lok Sabha is almost the same as it was in the party’s initial years, its national footprint has shrunk and the party has not been able to expand much beyond its immediate turf of Western Maharashtra and Marathwada.
The clock is almost symbolic of the undivided NCP’s position, frozen in time.
The above-mentioned NCP leader from the Ajit Pawar faction said this is the narrative that the party wanted to change when it chose to rebel against the Sharad Pawar-led NCP. “Since July 2023, we have maintained that the clock stands for ‘Ghadyal tech, vel navin (same clock, but in a different time).”
Mahesh Tapase, spokesperson of the Sharad Pawar-led NCP, said that the clock signified the pride of every party worker associated with the party and had also become a symbol to “oppose the dictatorial policies of the current government.”
“But ultimately the symbol is an electoral indicator. Way back in 1999 it was difficult to propagate the symbol. Now with the advent of social media, it is not very difficult to popularise a new symbol,” Tapase said.
But political commentator Pratap Asbe is not so sure.
Speaking to ThePrint, he said, “Among rural voters, people colloquially say ‘ghadyalala mat dila’ (I voted for the clock) instead of saying the party’s name. Ahead of the Lok Sabha election, popularising the new symbol to that extent is going to be an uphill task for the Sharad Pawar-led faction.”
Asbe recalled that in 1999, too, when the party had just been formed, it had got the clock symbol right before the Lok Sabha election. “The party had still put up a good performance. Sharad Pawar seems to think that if they did it then, they can do it again now. But, at that time there was no rival faction. This time, the presence of a rival clock symbol is going to create confusion in voters’ minds.”
In the 1999 Lok Sabha election, the NCP in its electoral debut had won eight seats, with a 2.27 percent vote share.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
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