With Ajit Pawar’s death, Mahayuti loses a source of stability. What next for BJP?
When Ajit Pawar joined the Mahayuti in 2023, Amit Shah told him, “This is your rightful place, but you took a long time.” However, many in the state BJP continued to remain unconvinced.
Political compulsions had brought the two sides together, fuelled by Ajit’s ambitions and the BJP’s political gambit to weaken an adversary like Sharad Pawar. (Express Photo) Following the sudden death of Maharashtra Deputy CM Ajit Pawar in an air crash on Wednesday, political equations in the Mahayuti are likely to be in flux. Though the NCP was ideologically different from the BJP, Pawar shared a good rapport with Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and that personal chemistry often worked to keep in check the other member of the Mahayuti alliance, the Shiv Sena led by Deputy CM Eknath Shinde.
Given the complexity of running a coalition, Fadnavis had to walk a tightrope right from the beginning, despite the BJP emerging as the single-largest party in the 2024 Assembly polls by winning 132 seats out of 288 as Shinde kept the ruling alliance on the edge by placing several terms and conditions for accepting the Deputy CM’s post and moving down a rung. That is when Ajit Pawar came forward to declare his party’s unconditional support to steady the coalition.
Now, in the absence of Ajit Pawar, with whom he built a relationship since their short-lived attempt to form the government in 2019, Fadnavis will have to cautiously deal with new realities in Maharashtra politics. Illustrating how big an absence Ajit dada — as the NCP leader was popularly known in political circles — will be for him.
“I have lost a strong and large-hearted friend,” the CM said. “His administrative experience and understanding of Maharashtra were of great help to the government.”
“The setback is for the NCP, which rallied around Ajit Pawar,” said a senior BJP functionary. “In his absence, there will be some trying to look for credible alternatives in the NCP (SP) or the BJP. The second possibility could be a merger of the NCP and NCP (SP).”
Unease in BJP
However, despite his rapport with Fadnavis and the welcome he received from the BJP’s central leadership when he made his decisive breakaway in 2023 and joined the Mahayuti — Union Home Minister Amit Shah told him at the time, “This is your rightful place but you took a long time” — a certain unease about him remained within the state BJP and the larger political ecosystem within which its functions.
When the Mahayuti performed poorly in Maharashtra in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, right-wing commentators blamed the alliance with the NCP as the reason. In an article published in an RSS-affiliated weekly, it was said that BJP workers and supporters had not accepted the alliance with Ajit, the Deputy CM, whom the party had targeted several years earlier for his alleged involvement in an irrigation scam. In 2023, a week before Ajit rebelled against his uncle, PM Narendra Modi had also targeted NCP leaders over their alleged involvement in a string of scams, including the irrigation scandal.
However, political compulsions had brought the two sides together, fuelled by Ajit’s ambitions and the BJP’s political gambit to weaken an adversary like NCP (SP) leader Sharad Pawar, who had stitched together the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance of ideologically disparate parties in 2019 to keep it out of power.
Though his administrative acumen and knowledge — he held the finance portfolio under several governments — came in handy for Fadnavis and the Mahayuti government, helping shape key policy decisions across key departments, including agriculture, cooperative, water resources, and rural development, the last few years in the alliance were not a smooth ride for Ajit as two ministers from the NCP were sacked: Dhananjay Munde and Manikrao Kokate. While Munde was made to resign following alleged links of his close aide Walmik Karad in the murder case of a sarpanch in Beed, Kokate was made to step down over an alleged housing fraud.
With the BJP’s huge victory in the Assembly polls in 2024, the municipal corporation elections became a challenge for parties in the state, especially the NCP, whose grassroots presence was threatened by the BJP’s expansion. This made Ajit enter into a pre-poll pact with his uncle in the Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad municipal corporation elections, but it led to tensions in the alliance.
Ahead of the elections, the NCP leader said the aim was to “slay the demon of corruption”, with the attack taking the BJP by surprise. “They are power hungry. There is open loot going on,” he said, adding that Pimpri-Chinchwad had massively transformed during the tenure of his uncle Sharad Pawar and then under his leadership from 1991. “But we never got power hungry,” he said.
Several BJP leaders were taken aback by the remarks, with state BJP president Ravindra Chavan expressing the unease in the state unit about having Pawar in the alliance. “Apne gireban mein jhako (look into your own backyard) … If we open our mouths, he knows where it will lead,” Chavan said, referring to the Deputy CM.
However, Ajit Pawar pointed out that while the BJP had earlier levelled all sorts of allegations against him, he was now “sitting next to those very people in power”.
For all his attempts to build his own identity, Ajit, an 8-term MLA from Baramati, former MP, and a minister in multiple governments, could never become the CM. Often, when asked if he was in the race for the top post, he laughed it off saying, “It feels nice when your workers raise slogans … but I am well aware of the ground reality. Politics is about numbers.”
Till the very end, he displayed that political pragmatism that made him a crucial piece in the chessboard of Maharashtra politics.
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