In Major Maharashtra Upset, Ajit Pawar Defects To Shinde Govt With Uncle Sharad Pawar’s Closest Aides

In a surprising turn of events in Maharashtra, Sharad Pawar’s nephew Ajit Pawar changed his allegiance on Sunday and joined the Maharashtra Government led by Eknath Shinde.

While Ajit was sworn in as Deputy CM, eight other heavyweights of NCP were also sworn in as ministers, who have been close aides to his uncle and NCP President Sharad Pawar. These leaders include Chhagan Bhujbal, Dilip Walse-Patil, Hasan Musharif, Dhananjay Mundhe, and Aditi Tatkare. Ajit claims to have the support of 43 of the 53 NCP MLAs.

Ajit is now the second Deputy CM of Maharashtra, with Devendra Fadnavis of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) being the other. 

This is the second tripartite government in Maharashtra, with the BJP, Shinde’s Shiv Sena faction, and the NCP sharing governance. The first was formed in 2019 when Sharad Pawar stitched the coalition of the unified Sena, Congress, and NCP. It was known was the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition. In 2022, Shinde’s rebellion against the then-CM Uddhav Thackeray brought down the MVA government. Aided by the BJP, Shinde defected with 40 of the 57 Shiv Sena MLAs and eight of the 13 MPs to form government with the BJP. 

A year later, Ajit has followed in Shinde’s footsteps and effected a split in the NCP by defecting with 43 MLAs of the party. This is the third time since the Assembly elections of 2019 that he has taken charge as the Deputy Chief Minister. 

The long road to Ajit Pawar’s coup in NCP

In 2019, even as the MVA constituents were being brought together to form a government by his uncle, Ajit in a pre-dawn coup took oath as Deputy CM after aligning with the BJP. Fadnavis had then taken oath as the Chief Minister. However, that government lasted barely three days. The MVA Government was sworn in after the fall of the Fadnavis-Ajit Pawar “government”.       

Earlier on Sunday, NCP MLAs had met at Ajit Pawar’s Mumbai residence. His cousin and MP Supriya Sule and Bhujbal were also present at this meeting. Sule, the daughter of Sharad Pawar, was recently anointed as his political heir, when she was handed charge of the NCP as its working president. The other working president is senior leader Praful Patel, known to be a close Sharad Pawar. Sule had been handed the charge of Maharashtra, a state that was being monitored for the NCP by Ajit Pawar. At the time of Sule’s takeover of the NCP’s affairs in Maharashtra, Ajit Pawar was the Leader of the Opposition. A day later, Ajit Pawar publicly announced that he did not want to be the Leader of Opposition any more.  

At a press conference after the swearing-in ceremony, Ajit Pawar heaped praises on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his leadership. He also announced that the 2024 Lok Sabha elections would be fought by NCP under Modi’s leadership. Since that pre-dawn swearing in of Ajit Pawar in 2019, the relationship between uncle and nephew has been strained. Sule’s appointment has been the last nail for the disgruntled Ajit Pawar, considered to be an able administrator with a proven track record of governance. 

After the failed coup in 2019, Ajit Pawar was completely sidelined by his uncle. The opaqueness was also extended to Parth Pawar, Ajit’s son. About two months ago, Ajit Pawar had gone incommunicado, cancelling all his political and private appointments and holding extended meetings with the NCP MLAs. The split in the NCP had been a foregone conclusion and finally it happened today.   

What’s next in Maharashtra?

The BJP has been on a poaching prowl to break up the NCP and Congress after its success with Shiv Sena where it decimated the party, effected a defection, and brought down a stable government. Following the NCP split, the BJP has trained its guns on the disgruntled leaders of Congress Party. However, the MLAs who had defected with Shinde in the hope of ministerial berth are disappointed at this new turn of events. They were promised ministerial berths but were never inducted. 

With the NCP leaders being sworn in as ministers, the MLAs who support Shinde are caught in a fix. “Sharad Pawar is used to political upheavals and will bounce back,” said Sanjay Raut, MP of the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Thackeray faction). Sharad Pawar too said that those who have defected are in touch with him. 

Political analysts believe that the political scenario in Maharashtra is set to change in the coming months before the elections next year. Many leaders in the MVA own sugar mills, spinning mills, educational institutions, banks and are also directors on the board of cooperative banks. While the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has started searches in many of these institutions, including that of Ajit Pawar, the threat of further searches has left many of the leaders gasping for political breath. Given that many of the NCP leaders are facing probes, they feel aligning with Ajit Pawar is a safer option.

“Sharad Pawar has never acknowledged his nephew’s ambition to be the chief minister. For reasons best known to the two Pawars, Ajit has been completely sidelined within the NCP. He was a ticking time bomb and this split has been in the pipeline for some time now. The question is why did Sharad Pawar, who knew the extent of his nephew’s anger and disgruntlement not act?” says Shailesh Bhatt, a political researcher. 

About two months ago, in an interaction organised with Ajit Pawar by Sakal, the Pawar family-owned Marathi newspaper, the leader had heaped praises on Modi’s leadership, referring to him as a charismatic leader who faced no competition. 

The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Mumbai Police had in November 2022 sought to probe the links of firms liked to Ajit Pawar and his family in the Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank (MSCB) scam. In November 2021, the Income Tax Department had provisionally attached several assets worth Rs 1,000 crore of the leader —Deputy CM at the time— under the Benami Property Transactions Act, 1988. 

In the second week of April, the names of Ajit Pawar and his wife Sunetra were omitted from the charge sheet filed by ED in the MSCB scam. However, the companies linked to the family that came up during the probe have been mentioned in the charges heet which was filed then.

Prior to Ajit Pawar joining hands with Fadnavis in 2019, he had faced numerous charges and was being probed in the irrigation scam when Fadnavis was the chief minister. These charges were dropped against Ajit Pawar just before he took oath as Deputy CM with Fadnavis as CM in 2019.    

The loss of the national party status of the NCP too has made party leaders jittery about their political futures. In the Sakal interview, Ajit Pawar had announced that he will certainly stake claim to the chief minister’s post if the MVA came back to power in Maharashtra. It had been a strong message to his uncle who was rooting for Thackeray as the face of the MVA coalition for the 2024 assembly polls.   

A sizeable number of the 45 MLAs of the Congress Party too are keen on switching sides to the BJP as they are either being probed or are likely to be probed by ED in the months leading to the Lok Sabha and Assembly polls in 2024. With the party’s electoral share on a steady wane, leaders here are looking for options to stay politically relevant. Recently, Ashish Deshmukh, a Congress Party leader from Nagpur —Fadnavis’s home constituency— joined the BJP. 

Interestingly, a sizeable number of the 17 MLAs who support Thackeray too face probes. BJP leader Kirit Somaiya has been filing numerous applications under the Right To Information (RTI) Act, seeking information and probe status on the properties owned by Thackeray and his wife Rashmi.

In the case of the Pawar clan, their political rivalries within the family, though intense, have largely been beneath the surface. Like the Ajit Pawar-Supriya Sule rivalry, the fourth generation of the clan, cousins Rohit and Parth Pawar, too are caught up in establishing a hold in the second rung space of the NCP.

When there was talk of Ajit Pawar joining the Shinde government about two months ago, Sanjay Shirsat, spokesman for Sena’s Shinde faction faction, had told the media that his party will not share power with the NCP. 

“If Ajit Pawar leaves the NCP and joins the BJP, we will stay with the government. But if he leaves with some MLAs and comes to the BJP, we will leave the government,” Shirsat had then said. However, he was unavailable for comment after the turn of political events today.   

In June 2022, the BJP had moved Shinde —then a senior minister in the MVA Government— and the Sena MLAs first to Surat in Gujarat, then Guwahati in Assam, and later to Goa. All three are BJP-ruled states. Following days of drama after the defection, the-then Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari ordered Thackeray to take the floor test for the trust vote. However, Thackeray quit before the trust vote, bringing down the curtains on days of instability. Shinde formed the government with the help of the BJP.  

In 2019, despite the displeasure of his uncle, Ajit Pawar had pushed his son Parth to contest the Lok Sabha polls from the party’s stronghold Maval. Sharad Pawar had forgiven neither Ajit Pawar nor Parth for that blind-sighted manoeuvre which had cost the NCP its stronghold. Rohit too had contested the polls and is an incumbent MLA of the NCP. Then, an angry Sharad Pawar had withdrawn from contesting the Lok Sabha polls saying that it was not fair to the NCP workers to have so many members of the Pawar family contesting the elections. Despite this, Ajit Pawar did not relent.  

Unlike other political parties, the NCP has a strong second rung leadership. They have been groomed and mentored by Sharad Pawar and are waiting quietly for their turn to lead. Now, with 40 MLAs supporting Ajit Pawar, the NCP too is decimated like the Shiv Sena.  

With talks of succession gaining ground within the NCP and Supriya Sule’s elevated leadership status, Ajit Pawar’s frustration has become more compounded. In the eventuality of Sule being anointed as the political successor of her father, then the BJP-leaning Ajit will not give up without a fight.

Since its formation, the NCP has not been able to form a government on its own in Maharashtra. It has always taken a piggyback ride to be in power – first with Congress and later with the Shiv Sena and Congress in the MVA coalition.