It's never over until it is over. This would be the takeaway from year 2019 for the Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party.
If anyone thought that a regional party with an aging patriarch and eroding base did not have much of a future in the face of BJP juggernaut, Lok Sabha polls proved them right, but Maharashtra Assembly elections was a different story.
The NCP continued its alliance with the Congress for the Lok Sabha, but both the parties fared badly.
The Pawar-led party only retained its 2014 tally of five seats, four of which came from Maharashtra. The Congress was reduced to a single seat in the state.
As Assembly elections drew near, the NCP was beset by desertions. The party, made up mainly of leaders who rule over individual pocket-boroughs across the sugar-belt of western Maharashtra, saw several of them jumping the ship.