Sharad Pawar to quit as NCP chief: Recalling his exit from Congress in 1999 to form his party (2025)

This centrality of Pawar to the Congress’s future plans is ironic, as it was his expulsion from the Grand Old Party that led to the formation of the NCP on June 10, 1999.

In the two decades since, the Congress and the NCP have been allies at various levels, and Sharad Pawar has worked with Sonia Gandhi, whom he had rebelled against. However, Pawar’s was the first high-profile exit from the Congress under Sonia, which has since seen many tall leaders walk out.

The episode of Pawar’s rebellion has been much talked about and many political leaders have mentioned it in their books. Here is what happened in May-June 1999, and the events that led up to it.

Why Sharad Pawar left Congress

The bare facts are this — Pawar objected to Sonia Gandhi leading the Congress and being projected as its PM candidate due to her foreign origins, was expelled on May 20, 1999 along with PA Sangma and Tariq Anwar, and the three leaders together formed the Nationalist Congress Part on June 10 the same year.

However, Pawar’s resentment against Sonia had been building up for years.

Pawar’s version

In his book, Life on My Terms — From the Grassroots to the Corridors of Power, Pawar wrote that Sonia did not want any Congress man with an “independent mind” to become the Prime Minister, which is why PV Narasimha Rao was chosen over him for the job in 1991.

“Self styled loyalists of 10 Janpath started saying in private conversations that Sharad Pawar’s election as prime minister would harm the First Family’s interest in view of his young age. ‘Woh lambi race ka ghoda hoga (He will hold the reins for a very long time),’ they argued. Among them who played a clever trick were M L Fotedar, R K Dhawan, Arjun Singh and V George,” he wrote.

Claiming that Rao was considered a safer bet because he was of advanced age, Pawar further said in his book, “Arjun Singh himself aspired to become prime minister and hoped to succeed Rao soon. Anyway, once Sonia Gandhi had bought the coterie’s ‘bring Rao’ argument in 1991, the tide turned against me.”

Pawar narrated how P C Alexander later brokered peace and convinced him to become Defence Minister in Rao’s government. “He knew and I knew that I had been a strong contender but the Gandhi family was not about to let someone with an independent mind get to the prime minister’s post,” he wrote.

He also talked about how, on a number of instances, as Leader of the Congress in Lok Sabha, he was undermined by Sonia in her capacity as Congress president during 1996-97. He described as “shocking” an amendment to the Congress Parliamentary Party constitution in the early 1990s “solely” to make her the CPP leader, without being elected to Parliament. On his equation with Sonia, Pawar writes, “When she and I decided something, she would do exactly opposite. If I selected P C Chacko to open a debate on the party’s behalf, she would replace him just because he was supposed to be close to me.”

Going further back, to the developments during the merger of Congress (S) and Congress (I) in 1986, Pawar wrote that Rajiv Gandhi did not even mention his name in his speech: “I attribute this to the Gandhi family’s mindset. Whether Indiraji, Rajiv or Soniaji, all Gandhis consider the Congress as their family fiefdom.”

Despite the differences between Sonia and Pawar, their parties shared power in Maharashtra immediately after the 1999 split, and the NCP was a constituent of the UPA at the centre.

About the UPA government years, Pawar wrote that he had a comfortable alliance with Congress and Sonia never interfered in his ministerial job.

Apart from Sonia, Pawar wrote that Rajiv Gandhi too mistrusted him, after a lunch that Pawar had with Chandra Shekhar, a close family friend, immediately after the latter became PM in 1990, did not go down well with Rajiv.

Another former Congress leader’s version

The claim of Rajiv not trusting Pawar has also been made by another former Congress leader, K V Thomas. Thomas who was Food Minister in UPA II and was sacked from Congress in 2022, wrote his his book, Sonia – The Beloved of the Masses, that Pawar “backstabbed” Sonia, who had always kept a distance from him, because “perhaps, she had in her mind Rajiv’s observation that Pawar, though capable, was not trustworthy”.

Recalling the Congress Working Committee meeting on May 15, 1999, Thomas wrote, “Reclining on a white cushion, Sharad Pawar smiled at P A Sangma. That was the green signal for revolt in the party — a fact not known to many members present at the meeting.” He said Sonia was “dumbstruck” when Sangma raised her foreign origin issue.

“Pawar started from where Sangma stopped. He praised her role as president of the party in bringing about unity in the party and making it vibrant. Then he went on to add that the party was not able to counter the propaganda on Sonia’s foreign birth. ‘We have to seriously think about this,’ Pawar maintained. Sonia felt the heat of the revolt as she heard these words from Pawar who was made Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha by her,” he wrote.

Thomas went on to recall the heated exchanges that took place after that. He said while Sonia made a silent exit, Pawar along with Sangma and Anwar told Pranab Mukherjee that “this is our last CWC”. He said the trio, “who turned their back on the party”, later sent a letter to Mukherjee and Madhavrao Scindia in the form of a chargesheet.

“Sonia did not care to read it. The reply was written by Arjun Singh. He described the trio who broke with Sonia as the Mir Jaffers. The backstabbing was more than what Sonia could tolerate,” Thomas wrote.

Former President’s version

A less emotionally charged account of the events of May 1999 has been given by Congress leader and former President Pranab Mukherjee in his autobiography.

“In my opinion, Sharad Pawar, as the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, expected the party to request him, instead of Sonia Gandhi, to stake claim to form the government. After Sonia’s elevation as the Congress president, she consulted P Shiv Shankar on all important issues rather than Sharad Pawar. This sense of alienation and disenchantment may have been responsible for his statements on Sonia’s foreign origin, and his subsequent exit from the party in 1999,” Mukherjee wrote.