Maharashtra | Why Sunetra Pawar has inherited Pawar crisis

A by poll win in Baramati, emphatic as it was, did not quite reveal that the real battles for Sunetra Pawar lay ahead—and within her party. In January, days after her husband Ajit Pawar’s death in an air crash, Sunetra was sworn in as deputy chief minister and took over this half of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). But Ajit proves a hard act to follow as party boss. His tight, no-nonsense wielding of reins kept multiple satrapic ambitions in check; his absence loosens those restraints. Sunetra faces a lower threshold of deference from the old guard, especially on family. Her reliance on elder son Parth, now a Rajya Sabha MP, has made of him a rising power centre—a fact resented by the veterans. Younger son Jay, too, is testing the waters in Baramati and is tipped to be its assembly candidate in 2029.

BARAMATI AT STAKE

The first hurdle there comes from family too. Jay’s cousin, Rohit Pawar of the NCP (Sharad Pawar), is circling the same turf. A second-term MLA, he has alleged foul play in Ajit’s death—talks for a dtente between the two NCP factions were in the last stages before the crash. Rohit spoke up then for reunion; his own interest in Baramati now raises the prospect of a Pawar-vs-Pawar contest.

More serious, though, is a potential siege within her own NCP. Sunetra’s first formal act as party chief showed a keen sense of this. She asked the Election Commission of India (ECI) to ignore any mail sent in the party’s name between January 28 and February 26, before she took charge.

This was widely seen as a snub to working president Praful Patel and state chief Sunil Tatkare, who had written to the ECI claiming an ‘amended constitution’ that concentrated powers in the working head. Rohit accused the duo of plotting to hijack the party. Missing photos of Ajit and Sunetra on posters at a Tatkare event deepened suspicions.

Patel and Tatkare also skipped Sunetra’s recent Delhi visit, and there have been differences over dropping a political consultant to the party. Parth has publicly denied talk of a split, calling reports “baseless” and praising both leaders’ decades of work, but the unease is out there in plain sight. An NCP nomination to the legislative council devolved into a tussle—Parth, Patel and Tatkare each backed different names before ex-MLA Zeeshan Siddique emerged as a compromise based on an earlier commitment to his late father. When a list of office-bearers sent to the ECI omitted Patel and Tatkare’s names, Sunetra brushed it off as a “clerical mistake”. Rohit fanned the flames, prophesying an exodus of 22 legislators led by the senior duo to the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Veteran NCP figures admit to friction between Parth and the Patel-Tatkare duopoly. Sunetra’s real test, says one of them, will be projecting authority while reconciling these interests, warning of the conflict reaching “disruptive levels”. Another notes that the perception of capture by Patel and Tatkare—non-Maratha leaders in a ‘Maratha First’ party—makes even the rank and file restive.

THE OTHER CHALLENGERS

There are new battles lined up. The Rajya Sabha seat vacated by Sunetra’s election from Baramati has set off speculation, with Jay, minister Chhagan Bhujbal and three former MPs in the race. At the same time, Sunetra’s own position inside government is constrained. She holds excise, sports and youth, and minority development, but Ajit’s finance portfolio has reverted to chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, who seems happy enough with the additional responsibility.

The party also has to contend with the growing weight of the other deputy CM, Eknath Shinde, with his own spl-inter party, as a parallel Maratha pole in western Maharashtra—historically the NCP’s main catchment. Over the past two years, Ajit, for all his street cred in Baramati, had actually yielded ground to Shinde, who once held lesser stature. Sunetra, not a career politician till 2024, has to learn fast.