Opinion In Ajit Pawar’s death, a tragedy and more churn for Maharashtra politics
In a party and polity dominated by family and personality, Ajit Pawar leaves behind the question of the future of the NCP. His going will sharpen the tumult in the fluid politics of his state, his party -- and his family.
With his premature exit from the political field, Ajit Pawar joins leaders like Madhavrao Scindia, YS Rajasekhara Reddy, Pramod Mahajan, and more recently, Vijay Rupani, all gone in their political prime. The tragic death of Ajit Pawar, Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra, in an air crash Wednesday leaves an empty space, bringing to an abrupt end the career of a politician of his time. As part of different parties — from Congress to the Sharad Pawar-founded NCP to the NCP splinter he steered into the BJP-led NDA — and as six-time Deputy CM and eight-term MLA, Ajit Pawar embodied the dominant strand of a pragmatic politics that criss-crosses ideological red lines, while keeping alive a direct connect to the ground. His death also forecloses the possibilities that still lay ahead, perhaps, for the man who wanted to be chief minister. The churn in Maharashtra that began with the splitting of the NCP and Shiv Sena into two parties each, and that rearranged the two main coalitions, MVA and Mahayuti, is not yet done. Municipal polls nearly a fortnight ago saw the two NCPs join hands for the civic elections in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad, amid talk of tensions within the Mahayuti.
From the time he entered politics, getting elected to the Lok Sabha in 1991 from Baramati, a seat he later vacated for Sharad Pawar to settle down in state politics, Ajit Pawar earned a reputation, amid allegations of corruption, as an administrator who got things done, and as a finance minister who underlined fiscal discipline. He was also the politician whose unvarnished bluntness and impatient streak courted controversy — be it his swearing-in as Devendra Fadnavis’s deputy, after the 2019 assembly polls, in a hurried early-morning ceremony in Raj Bhavan to form a government that lasted 80 hours, or his comments during a period of acute water shortage that were seen to be off-key. Power came to him as a family bequest, but at the same time, as uncle Sharad Pawar started spending more time in national politics in Delhi, he moulded it in his own image in western Maharashtra’s sugar belt. “Ajit dada” kept the organisation intact, engaged with milk unions and sugar cooperatives and coordinated with other players and parties. When the NCP split in 2023, the majority of NCP workers saw their future with him. His faction’s performance in the 2024 assembly election seemed to cement his claim to leading the real NCP.
With his premature exit from the political field, Ajit Pawar joins leaders like Madhavrao Scindia, Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, Pramod Mahajan, and more recently, Vijay Rupani, all gone in their political prime. In a party and polity dominated by family and personality, he leaves behind the question of the future of the NCP. His going will sharpen the tumult in the fluid politics of his state, his party — and his family.
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