New Delhi, Oct. 2: The Nationalist Congress Party is dumping its demand for reservations for the Maratha community ahead of the coming Maharashtra Assembly polls with leaders concluding that the plank had backfired in the Lok Sabha elections.

Sharad Pawar’s party will steer clear of any demands specifically for the community in its campaign during the coming polls, top party sources told The Telegraph.

“The demand of reservations for Marathas backfired on us in the Lok Sabha elections. We are not going down that road again during the Assembly polls,” a senior leader said.

Pawar is often referred to as a Maratha strongman, but he technically does not belong to the Maratha community as it is traditionally defined though he hails from the state of Maharashtra. The NCP’s reservation demand in the Lok Sabha polls pertained to the Maratha community — not for all people from the state. Traditional Marathas claim to draw their lineage from 96 “original” clans, though other castes like Kunbis also often adopt Maratha names.

The planned joint manifesto of the Congress and the NCP for Maharashtra is expected to be silent on the Maratha reservations. But the NCP’s caution will not be restricted only to the manifesto, sources said.

The party will not campaign on any issues specifically linked to the Maratha community in these elections, the sources said. The move represents a significant shift for a party that has over its decade-long existence repeatedly projected itself as a champion of Maratha sentiments.

Leading up to the Lok Sabha polls, the party tried to garner votes by projecting the “Maratha” Pawar’s credentials for the post of Prime Minister. In its manifesto for the Lok Sabha polls, the party specifically said that it favours reservations for Maratha students in educational institutions.

Although the manifesto clarified that it was not seeking a reduction in other reservations, the demand for Maratha quotas upset other key voter segments, including the backward classes, party sources said.

“Many other communities started viewing us as pro-Maratha and this sentiment turned the tide against us in seats where we otherwise had a good chance of winning,” a leader said. The party’s strength was reduced from two seats to one in the Marathwada region of the state that hosts eight LS seats and is considered the heart of the Maratha belt.

A key reason for this decline in success was that OBCs — wooed aggressively by the BJP and Shiv Sena in this region for many years now — turned against the NCP, party leaders said.

The eight Lok Sabha seats in Marathwada hold 48 assembly constituencies. But the effect of the “pro-Maratha perception” also hurt the party in other parts of the state, including in the NCP’s traditional stronghold of western Maharashtra, the party sources said.

The party won just three seats in this region — it won six seats in the 2004 LS polls.

“While other factors such as internal dissent also contributed to our reduced strength in western Maharashtra, the strident pro-Maratha demands hurt us,” a leader said.