The uncle is the unquestionable king of this realm, his calculations never go wrong, and his political acumen is still relied on, overtly or covertly, for almost every decision in Maharashtra. The nephew, who has been quick on the uptake, has learnt every trick from him but his ambitions are clearly not in line with the clan’s precepts.
In the last three decades, countless challengers have attempted to breach the
Pawar
dynasty’s bastion, yet electoral victory has always favoured the patriarch and NCP founder
Sharad Pawar
, or his chosen heirs.
However, this time, the 83-year-old warhorse is not facing an external adversary but a shrewd insider, his nephew
Ajit Pawar
who seeks to test the limits of his dominance. Once the senior Pawar’s protegé, Ajit has broken away, taking along the party’s name and its symbol — a clock.
Reigning over a fractured fortress — now called NCP (SCP) — Sharad Pawar has anointed his three-time MP daughter,
Supriya Sule
, to lead the charge from
Baramati
, which is the family’s citadel. Ajit Pawar, currently one of Maharashtra’s two deputy CMs, has fielded his wife,
Sunetra Pawar
.
On the surface, it is a Supriya vs Sunetra battle, but it symbolises a desperate struggle for legitimacy and supremacy within Baramati’s most powerful family. Supriya has inherited splintered support and unfamiliarity among voters with a new symbol — ‘a man playing tutari’, and faces the formidable NCPBJP-Shiv Sena coalition,
Mahayuti
. While Sunetra has neither the voter connect nor the politician’s charisma. Political analyst Abhay Deshpande says Supriya may leverage the victim card while Sunetra, being a novice, can only bank on her husband’s track record.
Additionally, Supriya faces antiincumbency sentiments, he says. Situation on the ground, meanwhile, seems favourable for Sunetra. Of the six assembly segments under Baramati Lok Sabha seat, four are with the governing Mahayuti — two with NCP and two with BJP; and two with Congress which, along with NCP (SCP), is part of the opposition alliance Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA). So, in Baramati LS seat, Sharad Pawar’s faction does not have any MLA while his nephew’s group has two — Baramati assembly seat (which Ajit Pawar himself represents) and Indapur (NCP’s Dattatray Bharne).
After former state ministers Harshvardhan Patil (BJP) and Vijay Shivtare (Shiv Sena), who holds sway in Indapur and Purandar and were earlier at odds with Ajit Pawar, declared their support for the deputy CM, he is now hoping to get support in Khadakwasla and Daund, the two assembly segments held by BJP. On the other hand, Supriya is counting on support from loyalists and sympathy for her father, besides votes from the two Congress-led assembly constituencies of Bhor and Purandar.
The Rise Of Pawar, & The Other Pawar
A look at Sharad and Ajit Pawar’s career graphs shows that they both had humble beginnings and meteoric rises. In the early 1960s, Yashwantrao Chavan, the then chief minister, spotted potential in Sharad Pawar during his college days in Pune. Sharad Pawar grew influential in Youth Congress and at 27, he won his first assembly polls from Baramati, followed by becoming Maharashtra’s youngest CM and getting central ministerial berths.
Under his uncle’s guidance, Ajit started as a director in a sugar cooperative. In 1991, he made his political debut and won the Baramati LS seat. However, he had to resign later to accommodate his uncle’s central ministerial duties. Rising swiftly, Ajit secured the Baramati assembly seat and became a minister in Sudhakarrao Naik-led Congress govt in Maharashtra. Sharad Pawar splitting from Congress in 1999 and forming NCP further spurred Ajit’s ascent.
Becoming a key figure, Ajit extended his influence statewide while his uncle focused on national affairs. Through all of this, the uncle-nephew rivalry, even if subdued, existed, political analysts say. It reached its peak in 2019 when a rebellious Ajit Pawar marched to Raj Bhavan and took oath as the deputy CM, aligning with BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis as the CM. This honeymoon proved shortlived and Ajit returned to the fold. The cracks, however, remained.
“Within NCP, there were always two factions. This led to frequent power struggles between the two. The fact that Ajit is scarcely mentioned in his uncle’s autobiography, ‘Lok Maze Sangati’, points to the long-standing differences between them,” says Prakash Pawar, professor of political science at Shivaji University, Kolhapur.
In 2023, Sharad Pawar declared he would step down as NCP’s national president, a position Ajit vied for. Later, he reversed this decision following overwhelming demand from followers. Eventually, in July that year, Ajit decided it was time to fulfil his ambitions and joined the Eknath Shinde-led govt, along with a group of MLAs and MLCs. The Baramati seat, with the Pawars since 1996 (Sharad Pawar from 1996 to 2009 and Supriya Sule from 2009 to 2019), is the only Maharashtra seat which will see a woman vs woman battle.
