The event is being held to mark Sharad Pawar’s 50 years in electoral politics; Raj could coerce him to open his political cards.
Mumbai: In 2006, when Raj Thackeray founded his Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), NCP chief Sharad Pawar had bitingly said, “A person who wakes up at mid-day cannot run a successful party.”
Twelve years later, Thackeray whose political party is now close to decimation will share the stage with the prescient Pawar Wednesday evening, playing the role of an interviewer. The event, although called an apolitical one, is being held in Pune to mark Pawar’s 50 years in electoral politics.
This is for the first time that the MNS chief will interview a political leader on a public platform. A couple of years ago, he had interviewed Babasaheb Purandhare, an eminent Marathi writer and theatre personality, for a TV channel.
“We wanted to organise a public interview of Pawar saheb. But, there has been a lot that has been said and written about him already,” said Nitin Jalukar from the Jagtik Marathi Academy, which is organising the event.
“His life is like an open book. So, we thought about ways in which we can make this particular interview different and approached Raj Thackeray to conduct it,” Jalukar added.
Pawar is one of the founders of the Jagatik Marathi Academy.
Both personalities are from significant political families in Maharashtra, and with Thackeray having known Pawar since he was a child, he will have a lot of insights about the NCP chief that are not known to the public, Jalukar said.
Moreover, the combination of two people — the cautious Pawar who never opens his cards, and the blunt Thackeray who is known for his sharp remarks and for speaking his mind — is likely to make for very interesting viewing, political watchers say.
The event is significant also because Raj has criticised Pawar through his speeches and in his cartoons in the past. For example, he once said that the break-up in the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance was scripted by Pawar. The MNS chief had also done a caricature mocking the Modi-Pawar friendship after the PM’s visit to Baramati in 2015.
‘This will be a crowd-puller’
“We are expecting a crowd of 25,000-30,000 people and have made the necessary arrangements. We have appealed to everyone to not carry party flags or raise campaign slogans,” Jalukar said.
The interview was to earlier take place in the first week of January, but both leaders as well as the organisers decided to postpone it following the violence in Bhima Koregaon on 1 January, followed by a spate of unrest in different parts of the state.
Before the interview, the organisers will also show a compilation of videos where Thackeray has mentioned Pawar in his speeches. Sources close to the MNS chief said that Raj has spent the last month reading books and any available published material on Pawar’s life and has even held discussions with small groups of senior political journalists from Mumbai and Pune in his preparation for the interview.
“It is likely that Raj saheb will discuss the political experiments of Sharad Pawar over the years,” Sandeep Deshpande, an MNS leader, said. “There could be some sharp questions on the current political situation in Maharashtra, on the BJP-led government, the perception about PM Narendra Modi among others.”
According to Deshpande, the discussion may also touch upon the possibility of an alternative political front in Maharashtra.
He said although it is not a political event, the Pune programme may provide some boost to the MNS, which is struggling to galvanise its disenchanted cadre and improve its political fortunes ahead of the 2019 polls.
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Interesting topic
Mr Sharad Pawar can choose between the Congress and the BJP. Barring his first stint as CM, the happiest, most productive years of his life have been with the Congress; the DNA of most of his party colleagues is also shared with this party. Fifteen years of ruling Maharashtra, with a very fair representation of portfolios, was in coalition with the Congress. The third front, which might give the great man a chance to be PM, does not excite the national imagination any more. The next general and state elections will be Mr Pawar’s last ones. He must choose wisely, for the mantle has to be passed on to the next generation.