'Pawar Play': Has Sharad Pawar, Master Of Political Optics, Returned?

In the high-stakes world of politics, few have mastered the art of the visual narrative as effectively as Sharad Pawar. As the adage goes, 'a picture tells a thousand words' and the veteran Nationalist Congress Party leader remains one of its more adept practitioners.

Over his 50+ years in politics, Pawar has consistently wielded optics to shape public perceptions of himself and his party, with the tragic death of his NCP rival and nephew Ajit Pawar in a plane crash last week providing another example.

Pawar remained in the background – citing ill health – during elections to 29 municipal bodies last month, despite the polls featuring a tentative burying of the hatchet.

He returned to TV screen hours after news of Ajit Pawar's death. While it was expected to see the family patriarch with his kin in that moment of grief, it was his next move that caught many off guard.

Pawar visited the banks of the Nira river in Baramati, the family's political stronghold.

Baramati, Maharashtra: NCP chief Sharad Pawar visited the Nira River in Baramati taluka to assess water pollution and spoke with local residents. pic.twitter.com/5IlBsKmsa1

— IANS (@ians_india) January 30, 2026

On paper he was there to check rising pollution levels and he did exactly that; Pawar senior expressed visible disgust at the river's condition and demanded immediate action.

To seasoned observers the subtext was clear.

By appearing in Baramati, a bastion nurtured by both nephew and uncle over decades, he was signalling to them that the district had not been 'orphaned'.

It was a calculated display of continuity and told the state's political machinery: 'I remain active, relevant, and fully capable of calling the shots in the inevitable transition following my nephew's death'.

This is a playbook Sharad Pawar has refined since his early years.

In the 1990s, as the Defence Minister he participated in a 'jackstay' exercise in the Arabian Sea, i.e., hanging from a rope between two moving warships.

The resulting photographs didn't just show a minister in a life jacket… they projected a leader who shunned the comfort of a Delhi office to understand the gruelling ground realities of the armed forces.

The speech in Satara remains perhaps his most iconic modern image.

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Eighty years old and drenched to the bone while addressing a rally, Pawar turned an existential crisis for his party, then riddled by defections, into a wave of emotional sympathy.

Sharad Pawar's Satara rain speech.

That single moment turned the tables, propelling the NCP to a position of strength and eventually leading to the formation of the Maha Vikas Aghadi.

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Now, as the state grapples with Ajit Pawar's death and a possible reunification of the NCP, the visit to the Nira served as a familiar opening gambit. That, in the complex Maharashtra political landscape, the patriarch is still visible and is still very much part of the game.

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