Students ran to get themselves photographed with him at a time when politicians have become a dirty word. He has set up a string of institutions in the area like the Vidya Pratishthan, providing education from KG to PG.Pawar's Baramati foray comes against the backdrop of an uneasy relationship between him and Sonia Gandhi. He, perhaps, realises that his bid for the top slot is going to be a long haul, with the reins of power in the Congress having gone back to the Gandhi family.

The options before him are notmany. He cannot break away from the Congress and form a regional party in the hope of emerging as the first among equals in a United Front kind of scenario for the simple reason that the Congress will not break. Maharashtra already has a regional party, the Shiv Sena, and the situation is not moving towards the Third Force leading a government.The other option is to bide his time, but this may take years. He will have to wait for Sonia to come to power and make mistakes.

Sonia suspects he does not fully accept her leadership. So, she is trying to encourage an alternative power structure in Maharashtra. Large crowds came to hear her even at odd hours during her recent visit to the state.Sonia may want to sideline the Maratha leader but cannot ignore him in the run-up to the polls, given his grip over the party in the state. He is accepted by industry, the farming community and increasingly also by the middle class which is fast forgetting his suspected links with Dawood Ibrahim. The year-end Assembly pollswill also determine Sonia's future.She will want to contain him, and one way of doing it would be to send him back to Maharashtra. Pawar recently ruled out returning to state politics.The Congress president may hope that Pawar would get discredited on his own. Many suspect that the target of the Congress demand for a JPC to probe the Bhagwat affair is not just George Fernandes but also Sharad Pawar and Mulayam Singh Yadav, both former defence ministers.

The importance of Baramati lies not just in being the pocketborough of Pawar. He has won all the 11 elections to the constituency. In the past Baramati has been his springboard to the leadership of the state. Hemmed in as he is today, he is using Baramati to tell the nation that the days of garnering votes on the basis of charisma and rhetoric are over and that people now expect work on the ground. And it is for that reason that his relevance cannot be ended so easily.