Ajit Pawar: The behemoth beyond Baramati or rebel without applause?

“When there is no water, how can it be released?…Should we urinate there? But if there is no water, it’s not even possible to urinate.”

A statement like this, in response to protests by drought-hit farmers seeking water, could have spelled doom for a politician in Maharashtra – where farmers make up for 65 percent of voters. But not for Ajit Pawar, who made the remark as a deputy chief minister in April 2013, and continues to win one election after another with victory margins of at least 1 lakh.

Over a decade after that faux pas he had termed as the “biggest mistake” of his political career, with a fast as atonement, Pawar has come a long way. Now in his fifth stint as deputy CM, he seems to have pulled off his most formidable challenge, outclassing his mentor and uncle Sharad Pawar, but leaving cracks the Nationalist Congress Party may find too difficult to fix. 

Last week, a show of strength led by him had more NCP MLAs, including his uncle’s loyalists, as compared to another held by Pawar Senior. But as flip-flops continue, it will be difficult to gauge which way the winds will blow in Maharashtra’s new political season.

So what made it possible for Ajit Pawar? Why did he feel the need to upend family bonds? Is he all about “development”, as many of his supporters currently claim? How much financial and political clout does he have? And will he be able to hold his own against his former mentor, or be alienated in the Devendra Fadnavis-Eknath Shinde camp?

From dropout farmer to politician

The Pawars come from Katewadi village of Pune’s Baramati tehsil. Now among Maharashtra’s most powerful political dynasties, it was Sharad Pawar’s mother Sharda Pawar who started the family’s political innings by becoming a member of the Pune local board in 1936, and the left Peasant Workers Party. 

Sharad Pawar’s politics, however, was different from his mother’s. And it was this politics that influenced Ajit Pawar, the son of Pawar senior’s elder brother Anantrao – who used to work at V Shantaram’s iconic Rajkamal Studios. The mark of his uncle’s tutelage and social engineering was clear even in Pawar Junior’s recent cabinet picks – the swearing-in ceremony this month had a mix of OBC, SC, tribal and Muslim faces. 

A teetotaller, Ajit went to Maharashtra Education Society high school in Baramati and then for a B Com degree at the Gopal Krishna Gokhale College in Kolhapur. But with the death of his father, who had a dairy and poultry farm in Katewadi, he had to drop out in the final year, return to Baramati and take up farming in 1981.

Ten years later, Ajit won the Lok Sabha election from family turf Baramati, with a margin of 3,36,263 votes. But this had only come after a decade of Ajit cutting his teeth in local politics – under the mentorship of Pawar senior – with his appointment as the director of a sugar factory and cooperative in 1982. 

Such sugar cooperatives are central to the economy of hundreds of villages in western Maharashtra. They have, over the decades, helped farmers get better prices and also created jobs – this has often given a chance to directors to project themselves as local benefactors and emerge as politicians. The directors are chosen through a process involving representatives from villages, where cooperatives have members in thousands.

“Even the elder brother of Pawar saheb, Appasaheb Pawar, was very keen to contest (the 1991 Lok Sabha poll), but the people of Baramati wanted dada to represent them as he was young and worked efficiently as the director of the sugar factory,” according to Sheetal Kate, a former sarpanch from Baramati.

His first Lok  Sabha stint, however, did not last long. In 1991, when Pawar was offered the defence portfolio in the PV Narasimha Rao cabinet, he needed to be in Parliament again. Ajit quit as MP, just four months after the election, to offer the seat for Pawar Senior to contest – he won the election and got the job.

The same year, Ajit returned to Maharashtra politics, winning the assembly election from Baramati, and becoming the agriculture minister in the cabinet of Sudhakar Rao Naik, who was seen as Pawar Senior’s proxy. Ajit was soon entrusted with the responsibility of chairman of the Pune district cooperative bank.

But his real rise began only once Pawar broke away from the Congress and formed the NCP in 1999, with the uncle focusing on the national expansion of the party, and the nephew taking over as the NCP’s state pointsperson. “Dada was a known personality only in the Pune region until then, but soon he became a known personality across Maharashtra…Pawar saheb’s target was to expand the party so he was busy with it and dada began taking care of local issues in Baramati,” Kate said.

But how did he gain clout?

Pawar, who now has more MLAs and MLCs on his side than the faction led by his uncle, is also backed by several Pawar loyalists, such as Chhagan Bhujbal, Dilip Walse Patil and Hasan Mushrif. A section of Ajit’s supporters claim that many NCP leaders switched sides only because they could not see Pawar’s daughter Supriya Sule take over the reins of the party – a position they feel is deserved by “dada”.

Ajit’s clout has all been too visible. 

In the run-up to the 2019 assembly poll, he lashed out at Shiv Sena MLA Vijay Shivtare over the latter’s continued attacks on Supriya Sule, saying, “I will see how you become an MLA this time…Maharashtra knows that no one’s father can do anything if I decide not to let someone become an MLA.”

Shivtare was a minister in the BJP-Shiv Sena government and the MLA from the Purandar seat, which was part of the Baramati Lok Sabha constituency represented by Sule. He lost the 2019 election to the NCP-Congress candidate by over 30,000 votes.

In November that year, as Ajit joined the Devendra Fadnavis government as a deputy CM, an NCP leader had put up posters showing Pawar Junior as a traitor in some parts of Mumbai. After the oath-taking ceremony, Ajit allegedly threatened the leader over the posters, and the latter could not be spotted at any NCP events for months, according to a journalist privy to the incident. 

“Ajit Pawar is all about threats…He sidelined Pawar’s old supporters with his arrogance and crude remarks and made his own support base,” said former IPS officer Suresh Khopde, who contested as an Aam Aadmi Party candidate against Supriya Sule in 2014 and filed a case against Ajit for threatening locals in Masalwadi village. Pawar, as Sule’s campaign manager, had allegedly threatened villagers with suspending their water supply when they questioned him over his party’s promises, claimed Khopde . 

“I filed the complaint at Vadgaon police station but his people started threatening villagers to change their statements…His supporters took out a protest march against me. He likes to call himself a ruffian,” said Khopde. “He appoints bureaucrats of his choice in the area and they only do what he instructs them to do.”

But there’s a lot more to Ajit’s ascendance. Over the years, he has created his own support base within the NCP, using his rising popularity and posts. 

“After entering politics, he introduced young people and made his own support base…Over the years, his popularity increased as he used money and clout to benefit his candidates,” said a senior political analyst who has observed Pawar Junior for the last two decades. “Cooperative and industrialists were the stronghold of Sharad Pawar while Ajit had dominance over banks and contractors…he never shies away from financially helping his picks to fight elections.”

But where does the money come from?

Cooperatives, corruption, and cases

From a dropout farmer with a poultry and dairy business, Ajit, along with his wife Sunetra, and sons Jay and Parth is now linked to at least 20 companies, including those dealing in finance, food and beverages, sugar, and textiles, and controls many of these. According to his 2019 election affidavit, he has assets worth Rs 75 crore.

He has also had control of at least two cooperative banks. He was a chairman of the Pune district cooperative bank from 1991 to 2007, and was among the directors of the Maharashtra  State Cooperative Bank between 2001 and 2011.

But in 2019, the ED began investigating an alleged fraud in loans to the tune of Rs 25,000 crore dating to the period when Ajit was a director of the MSC Bank, based on a criminal PIL. Ajit wasn’t the only one; the bank had 77 directors during this period, including 44 who were elected and 33 appointed – most of these were from NCP. Around 50 NCP leaders, including Ajit, were subsequently booked in the case. 

Additionally, during his tenure as irrigation minister, he also allegedly favoured certain contractors in awarding contracts, with irregularities to the tune of Rs 20,000 crore. A slew of cases, which were initiated after a whistleblower’s complaint in 2012, accused the Vidarbha Irrigation Development Corporation of handing out funds in fraudulent transactions to 60 contractors, including infrastructure bigwigs such as Avinash Bhosale, Ajay Sancheti and Sandip Bajoria.

Senior journalist Sunil Tambe alleged that the contractor lobby is under Ajit’s hand. “He also holds command over different office-bearers of NCP. He has provided all the resources to his MLAs and party workers. He was the chairperson of the PDCC for around 15 years and director of the MSC bank for 10 years…Despite the scams, nobody has touched him. People think he is invincible.”

Uddhav Bhadsalkar, a senior journalist who has covered Ajit Pawar since the early days of his political career, said that “he managed” to get control “over all types of contractors” because of the “effective control over the party and government”.

Days before Ajit Pawar joined the Fadnavis-Shinde camp, PM Modi had referred to the alleged Maharashtra cooperative bank scam and the irrigation scam in his speech targeting the NCP and other parties – which had recently gathered in Patna as part of an effort to bolster an alliance against the BJP for the 2024 polls. And a day after Ajit’s swearing-in, Sharad Pawar hit out at the PM as well as the rebels while pointing to an “ED problem”.

“He said the NCP was involved in corruption. While stating this, he also mentioned the state cooperative bank. He also referred to the complaint regarding irrigation… I am happy that he has given oath to some members of the NCP. It means there was no truth in the allegations that he made. He has freed all of them from the allegations…he spoke about taking action. We will have to see what relief they get,” the NCP supremo said.

Ajit was given a clean chit by the anti-corruption bureau in nine cases linked to the alleged irrigation scam soon after he formed an 80-hour government with BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis in November 2019. However, the ED case in the alleged MSCB scam is still pending. The agency filed its chargesheet in April, mentioning a company owned by Pawar Junior and his wife Sunetra, but without naming the couple. 

Family ‘feud’?

While Pawar Senior is often termed by his supporters as the “best prime minister India never had”, Ajit perhaps does not want his admirers to call him as “the best CM Maharashtra never had” and hence has made his wish to occupy the top post public – at least twice this year, most recently on July 5.

According to Rahul Nirmala Prabhu, a Mumbai-based political journalist who predicted Ajit’s rebellion two months before it actually happened, claimed that the Pawar family had decided at a recent family gathering that once Sharad Pawar hangs his boots, Supriya Sule will take care of the party’s central command while Ajit will look after state politics. 

“Everything was decided and planned but when Sharad Pawar resigned on May 1, he received an overwhelming response from NCP workers which changed his mind. The second mistake he made was to hand over the party’s reins to Supriya.”

A senior NCP leader, who has been part of Sharad Pawar’s core group, said on the condition of anonymity that there is “no doubt” that Sule is a good parliamentarian but “there is no comparison between Ajit and her in terms of working capacity and leadership qualities…Ajit was getting sidelined continuously.”

Ajit has tried several times to take key positions in the Maharashtra cabinet, but that ambition has never gone without challenge. In 2009, the party picked Chhagan Bhujbal over him to be the deputy CM, and Pawar Junior later said the BJP had reached out to him. He eventually got the position in 2012 in the wake of the Adarsh housing scam but had to resign within a few months amid allegations about the irrigation scam.

This stayed the same over the years. That the Maha Vikas Aghadi ostensibly decided to continue projecting Shiv Sena’s Uddhav Thackeray as its CM face aggravated this sense of alienation, which Ajit had felt just four years ago, for reasons entirely different.

In 2019, Ajit had rebelled against his uncle when the NCP supremo was trying to stitch together an alliance of the Congress, NCP and Shiv Sena to form the government. He took several MLAs to Raj Bhavan, and suddenly took oath as deputy CM with Fadnavis as the chief minister. Ajit had then claimed to have the support of over 50 NCP MLAs, but they eventually returned to the party fold, and he was left isolated within the NCP.

Ajit and his son Parth, many say, were being sidelined within that party since then.

Rahul Nirmala Prabhu claimed there is also a rift between Ajit and Karjat Jamkhed MLA Rohit Pawar, the grandson of Sharad Pawar’s elder brother Appasaheb. “It is believed that Rohit has inflicted a lot of damage on the image of Ajit’s son Parth. Ajit Pawar will never forget this.”

But what of NCP workers and supporters? Where do they stand in this power tussle, and how do they see Ajit as a politician?

‘Ruthless’ administrator, ‘more straightforward’

Rajlakshmi Bhosle, a senior NCP leader, said Ajit is an “outspoken” leader who is “more straightforward” than his uncle. “If someone tries to play tricks with him…he attacks them openly.”

“Dada may shout at us, he may get blunt sometimes but he never lets  people down and makes sure to get their work done,” said Raviraj Tawre, an NCP worker from Baramati who claimed to have received tremendous support from Ajit Pawar after he was shot at by people “from my own party” over resentment over distribution of tickets ahead of civic polls in May 2021. Taware said “dada” arranged for an air ambulance, and coordinated with doctors and police authorities to ensure that medical staff managed to “treat me successfully”. “If I would have died, it wouldn’t  have made any difference to his stature, but dada never leaves his people stranded.”

According to Taware, Ajit Pawar is an early riser who acknowledges hard workers and discourages alcoholism. “He is like a coconut; hard from outside but soft inside.”

Pawar Junior conducts a janta darbar each Sunday at 7 am on the premises of Vidhya Pratishthan – a charity trust run by the Pawars – in Baramati, with hundreds of people lining up with their grievances.

According to Kate, his “only instructions” are to arrive with a written application listing out the name, phone number and problem. “Dada sorts out most of  the problems on the spot itself…If has to leave in any emergency, he collects all the applications. He starts sorting them out immediately by giving directions to his personal assistant. He is very accessible and can be approached by anyone. He scolds if someone comes with a mediator…He will say yes only if he thinks that he can solve the problem…He will not make you run from pillar to post on the basis of false hopes.”

Ajit Pawar is often credited with making Pimpri Chinchwad one of Asia’s richest municipal corporations – the NCP has retained power in the corporation for 15 years until the BJP won from the area in 2017. But despite the loss, Pawar still has significant goodwill in the region close to his heart. It is because of this that his recent announcement to visit Pimpri Chinchwad to inaugurate future projects as the deputy CM made a section of the BJP insecure, and Fadnavis had to hold a meeting last week to assuage concerns.

Such anxieties notwithstanding, the BJP only has to gain from Pawar Junior, say observers. 

Thane-based political commentator Harish Kerzarkar said, “Ajit Pawar will get the BJP what leaders like Harshvardhan Patil and Eknath Shinde were unable to do. He will get them the support of Maratha voters…but this may affect their largest and strongest support base of OBC…In the next assembly election, there is a high chance that Fadnavis will be sent to Delhi and Ajit Pawar will become the CM.”

However, Pratap Aasbe, a Mumbai-based political commentator, said that Ajit’s remarks suggesting Pawar Senior to retire have sent out the wrong message. “Sharad Pawar has a support system, from sports to films to industrialists and cooperatives. Ajit does not have that kind of support system across all fields. There is no doubt that he is an extremely popular leader but it’s not going to be easy…Sharad Pawar is someone who doesn’t let things go easily.”

Maharashtra is set to hold municipal and local elections in October, and will vote for Lok Sabha and assembly seats next year. Sharad Pawar has already launched his statewide tour to piece the party together in the wake of the rebellion, even as the opposition looks weaker and the BJP, having gained a new ally, more belligerent.

For now, it seems to be an all-out political war between the uncle and the nephew. But in a state where three primary parties have forged the most unexpected alliances in the last five years – with the two leaders playing a key role in demonstrating that politics is the art of the possible – the fresh Pawar power tussle could not be completely devoid of the possibility of becoming more than just a tale of egos.