The tick-tock of the Pawar family clock

“Saheb is definitely hurt that importance was given to personal political ambitions over the family,” says Vitthal Maniar, 86, sitting in his office in a crowded lane of Nana Peth in Maharashtra’s Pune. Saheb is Maniar’s college friend and NCP (SP) chief Sharad Pawar, who turned 84 on December 12, 2024. Maniar had fought and lost a college election against Sharad, but gained a lifelong friend. The families are so close that Ajit Pawar, 65, Sharad’s nephew, calls him Kaka (father’s brother).

Maniar is referring to the “personal political ambitions” of Ajit, who is now holding the post of Deputy Chief Minister for the sixth time. In mid-2023, Ajit had split from the centrist Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), co-founded by Sharad in 1999, taking along with him a majority of its MLAs. He then joined hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena, partners in the ruling Mahayuti alliance.

Since its inception, the NCP has never formed a government on its own, though it has almost always been part of the ruling alliance in the State. It has been one of the strongest regional forces, an umbrella under which sugar barons and regional satraps from resource-rich western Maharashtra gather. Sharad has been Chief Minister four times and his family has businesses in sugar, other agro-industries, realty, and the media.

Today, the Pawar empire is in flux, with six members of the family in active politics and the third generation keen to prove its mettle. While the ongoing tussle between uncle and nephew has drawn national attention, at the heart of the family disruption is the question of who will inherit Sharad’s six-decade-old political legacy.

At the polls

Ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha poll, Ajit’s faction was given the NCP’s name and ‘clock’ symbol. Sharad’s group, NCP (SP), was treated as a faction and allotted the symbol of ‘a man blowing a trumpet’ (tutari vajavnara maanus in Marathi). While the matter is sub judice, it was a blow to the patriarch. Days after his trusted aides left him, reporters asked Sharad who was with him. He promptly raised his own hand and smiled.

In the Assembly election to 288 seats in November 2024, the NCP won 41 out of the 56 seats it contested, while the NCP (SP) secured only 10 out of the 86 seats it contested. For the first time in his political career, Sharad, who has never lost an election he has contested, did not address mediapersons the day the results were declared.

The next day, he said at a press conference that the results were “unexpected”, but he would not resign from politics. “That is a call that my colleagues and I will take. There was clear polarisation of votes in this election,” he said in Karad, where he goes every year to pay tribute to his political mentor and the first Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Yashwantrao Chavan, on his death anniversary. “People say the use of money during this election was unprecedented,” he said.

“Though he will not fight any polls, that man can never retire from politics. He eats, drinks, and breathes politics. He loves going among people. It works as a tonic for him,” his daughter Supriya Sule, 55, four-time MP from Baramati, had said at The Hindu’s ‘Poll Arena’, a political conclave held days before the Assembly election, vouching for her father’s love for public life.

Pawar power

Sharad was one of 10 children and born in Baramati, which became his political and business stronghold. Here, among sugarcane farmers, wheat growers, and grape exporters, amid lush green fields of village landscapes and city pockets, he established sugar cooperatives, research and educational institutes, and cultural centres. Today, Baramati’s Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation has over 400 companies.

Here, people talk fondly of the octogenarian, but there is a hushed discussion about Ajit’s work. “The people of the State have decided — Tai (Sule) for the Centre and Dada (Ajit) for the State,” says a person on condition of anonymity.

“Sharad flexed his muscles against an established politician in the 1960s, an unthinkable act then,” says Satish Khomne, 72, who has been the NCP (SP) chief’s political supporter since the 1970s. “He brought foreign associations for horticulture development and irrigation; he brought companies for investment. He showed Baramati what development meant. He was the one who brought in Ajit. But we know even today, Saheb has an eye on Baramati,” he says.

A former Union Agriculture Minister and Defence Minister, and a leader with multi-party reach, Sharad is a pillar of the INDIA bloc, a grouping of 30-odd parties that was formed to fight the BJP in the Lok Sabha election. His supporters say he holds the power to bring together unlikely leaders. “His friendships with political opponents and adversaries are legendary…. His networking skills are formidable and those skills are much needed when politics takes on a bitter partisan flavour, as it does every now and then,” Congress leader Sonia Gandhi had said of Sharad during his 75th birthday celebrations in 2015.

Sharad institutionalised women’s reservation in local self-government bodies in Maharashtra. It was during his tenure as Defence Minister that women were inducted into non-medical roles in the Army. However, he has also been associated with several alleged scams and controversies, both as a Minister and cricketing body head.

Congress leader K.V. Thomas had in 2014 called him a “backstabber” for revolting against Sonia in 1999. So had Shiv Sena leader Anant Geete in 2021. It was only poetic justice, say critics, that his own nephew betrayed him to join hands with the BJP. Many likened Ajit’s move to his uncle’s in 1978, when Sharad rebelled and toppled Vasantdada Patil’s government to become the youngest Chief Minister at 38 years.

In 2019, when Ajit joined hands with the BJP for the first time, Shalini Patil, the wife of Vasantdada, had said, “The way Sharad behaved with Vasantrao, he must have got a similar experience from his family when Ajit aligned with the BJP.”

NCP leaders and cousins Supriya Sule and Ajit Pawar in Mumbai, months before the party split in 2023.
| Photo Credit:
The Hindu

A matter of succession

In the Lok Sabha poll, Ajit’s wife, Sunetra Pawar, contested against his cousin Sule in Baramati. Shrinivas Pawar, Ajit’s elder brother, who heads the Sharayu Group of companies in Mumbai, which deals in agri-business, automobile dealerships, security solutions, among others, led the public expression of the family’s displeasure.

During the election campaigning, Ajit appealed to Baramati’s electors to vote for a ‘Pawar’, in an obvious reference against his cousin ‘Sule’ and in favour of his wife. Sharad had hit back saying, “There is nothing wrong in seeking votes for Pawar. There is the original Pawar and the one coming from outside.” Finally, Sule won.

“I do feel bad that I have to contest against a family member. Whatever happens, the fact is that we were a family, we are a family, and we will continue to be a family,” Sunetra had said.

During the election, the other Pawars had campaigned for Sule. She maintained that this was a battle of ideologies and she would contest on the basis of her work for the constituency.

Ajit later termed his wife contesting against Sule a “mistake” and appealed to Sharad not to field a family member against him as a candidate in Baramati in the Assembly election. Sharad did just that and fielded Yugendra Pawar, 32, Shrinivas’s son, who lost by over 1 lakh votes to his uncle. Ajit was back as MLA for the eighth time.

During the Assembly election, the rest of the family actively campaigned against Ajit, with Sharad’s politically reclusive wife Pratibha, referred to as Kaki, also hitting the ground in favour of Yugendra. In a lasting image, Pratibha, along with Sule’s daughter, Revati, in her 20s, was seen standing in front of a banner that read: “Mhatara jithe jaatay, changbhala hotay (Wherever the old man goes, it changes the winds).”

During his election campaign, Yugendra had said of his uncle Ajit: “Today, he has left Pawar Saheb, his ideology, and has taken the party with him. But people love Pawar Saheb.”

The ascent of Ajit

Things were different even during Deepavali, which at least 50 members of the Pawar clan usually celebrate together in Baramati. This time, the festival came during peak election campaigning. For the first time, the family had two separate celebrations in Baramati, one at Govindbaug, where Sharad and most of the family assembled; the other at Katewadi, where Ajit celebrated and met people at a ‘Janata darbar’.

A few months before the Lok Sabha election, Ajit while addressing NCP office-bearers in Mumbai said old people should sit at home and let the next generation handle affairs. Within months, Sharad’s NCP (SP) had contested 10 seats in the Lok Sabha poll and won eight. Fortunes were reversed in the Assembly election, though the NCP (SP)’s vote share was larger than the NCP’s.

Naresh Arora, who heads Design Boxed, a poll campaign management company, says it was a challenge managing Ajit’s image. “One perception was that he was arrogant, rude. That needed to be changed. He is actually a very jovial person, but never connected with people that way. So, we designed a campaign around this,” he says.

The party organised the Jan Samman Yatra, which boosted the morale of NCP workers and put Ajit in the midst of his electorate. “He was always seen as someone who sat in the Mantralaya (State Secretariat) and got work done. The yatra got him to mix with people. People liked that he cracked jokes and smiled. This was different from the image of the person who worked from early morning, got agitated with officials who didn’t deliver, and rebuked them in public,” says Arora.

Kiran Gujar, who micromanaged Ajit’s campaign, had said during the election, speaking through a pile of papers, local manifestos, and booth management sheets in Baramati: “There are over 1.5 lakh rural voters and 1 lakh urban voters in Baramati. There are 386 booths in 117 villages. We have 11,760 booth karyakartas (workers) who are actively working in this election.”

Surrounded by party workers asking for directions, Gujar had said the biggest plus was that Dada’s work spoke for itself.

On December 12, Ajit, Sunetra, and senior NCP colleagues visited Sharad’s Delhi residence to wish him on his 84th birthday. They were greeted by Sule, who almost hugged Sunetra and lovingly kissed her nephew Parth. At the time, the Mahayuti government had not been able to decide on a Cabinet almost 20 days after a decisive mandate. Soon, Ajit was given the post of Deputy CM.

Several leaders close to the Pawar family members say it will be difficult for them to bury their differences anytime soon. “It does not look like Sharad will support the BJP,” says a leader. However, another leader says, “The Pawars are like water. You can try to hit water with a stick, but you will not be able to divide it.”