Baramati, April 24: Campaigning for the second and last phase of polls in Maharashtra ended at 5 pm today.

At 3.45 pm, Sharad Pawar took to the stage for his first campaign speech this time in Baramati — his fief. He stayed on stage for exactly 25 minutes. But that’s all the Nationalist Congress Party chief and kingmaker thrice over needs to do on his home turf.

This time, too, Pawar kept the tradition. His last speech of the elections was reserved for his constituency.

The words Pawar and Baramati have become complementary. For the last two decades, they have not abandoned each other.

Pawar has a following and influence here that senior BJP and Congress leaders would die for.

This election, he is probably the only leader who can say he does not need to campaign in his constituency.

Big guns of other parties have not been as lucky. In Latur, Chunkey Pandey and Namrata Shirodkar were brought in to prop up the Congress campaign for former Lok Sabha Speaker Shivraj Patil. Though pitted against a first-time lightweight — Rapa Nilangekar of the BJP — Patil simply cannot take his fight lightly.

Chief minister Sushil Kumar Shinde is worried for wife Ujwala who is contesting from Solapur. In Bhandara, the Nationalist Congress Party’s number two, Praful Patel, seems equally anxious.

Even Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Congress president Sonia Gandhi have shown traces of nervousness in their home constituencies. Not Pawar.

A look around Baramati shows why. The roads are broad and clean, there are good hotel rooms at fair rates. There is a mini-university and the money-and-job spinning state industrial development corporation.

Even sugar-belt farmers here, reeling under a severe three-year drought, seem marginally happier than their counterparts in Satara and Sangli.

“He sent three Prime Ministers to Delhi,” said a speaker at Pawar’s rally here.

As the speaker waited for applause, he added: “You are privileged to have a leader like him in your midst.” But the people, packed like sardines in the small ground adjacent to T.C. College, were impatient to hear their leader. Suddenly there is a deafening roar and Pawar steps on the stage.

Pawar has to depend on Sonia in these elections but he is safe in Baramati.

In his political career, which saw him as the youngest chief minister in 1978 at just 38 years, Pawar has won every election he has stood for from here. He was the chief minister four times and has represented Baramati in Parliament six times.

Pawar peppered his speech with barbs at the Prime Minister and Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray. “Vajpayee asked me what is the secret deal I have struck with Sonia Gandhi. He is worried. He and Thackeray keep chanting my name day in and day out like a mantra. But there is no secret deal,” he said.

“My deal is for the farmers, for the youth, for the unemployed and for the labourers. My deal is to get back India’s pride in the international community. We have become a stooge of America. That is my deal but how can they understand.”

People hang on to his every word.

Here it seems there is no candidate against Pawar. At the BJP office, five men sit silent and sullen. “Everyone has gone out, that’s why no one is here,” said Devendra Bankar, a BJP leader.

Nearby, the NCP office is like a bustling Sunday market.

Prithviraj Jachak, a sugar baron and the BJP’s candidate against Pawar, downplays the challenge from Pawar.

The response to his candidature has been “encouraging”, said Jachak, sitting in his farmhouse on Barmati’s outskirts.

“The reading public will root for me as they are aware of the feel-good factor in the country. Sugar mills are not doing too well and except Baramati city the rest of the constituency lies neglected.”

A Pawar man earlier, Jachak fell out after differences cropped up on the issue of the new sugar body head. “People want change and this is a beginning,” he said.

Back in Baramati, Pawar says he has full faith in his people. But leaders of his party will tell you that Pawar this time is playing for Sonia and he is playing for the records.

“He will move ahead and even take Soniaji with him to Delhi,” said party worker Pradeep Jadhav. He, however, doesn’t explain where Pawar will take Sonia.