How Ajit Pawar became the comeback king of Maharashtra

In Maharashtra’s politics, one truth reigns supreme: it’s always too soon to write an obituary for a political party.

It took less than six months for Ajit Pawar’s political obituaries to transform into glowing tributes and Sharad Pawar’s celebrated legacy to dim under the shadow of defeat. 

At the time of writing this report, Ajit’s faction had won 40 seats and was leading in one more, as per the Election Commission data. Sharad Pawar’s faction, meanwhile, had won 10 seats out of the 86 it contested. Even in the 37 seats that saw a direct NCP vs NCP clash, the verdict was clear. The junior Pawar’s party outshined the senior Pawar’s faction by great lengths, securing a whopping 28 seats, while the latter managed only seven. Two seats went to independents. 

While the Sharad Pawar faction has a larger vote share (11.28 percent) as compared to the NCP (9.01 percent), it is primarily because the former contested 86 seats in comparison to the NCP’s 59.

At the time of writing this report, results were still being counted in 17 seats across Maharashtra.

Ajit Pawar’s NCP defeated Sharad Pawar’s NCP in the following constituencies: Tumsar, Aheri, Pusad, Basmath, Yevla, Sinnar, Dindori, Shahapur, Anushakti Nagar, Shrivardhan, Ambegaon, Shirur, Indapur, Baramati, Pimri, Hadapsar, Akole, Kopargaon, Parner, Ahmednagar City, Parli, Ahmadpur, Udgir, Phaltan, Majalgaon, Wai, Chiplun, and Kagal. 

The Sharad Pawar faction, meanwhile, defeated the junior Pawar’s candidates in the following seats: Mumbra Kalwa, Vadgaon Sheri, Beed, Madha, Islampur, Mohol, Tasgaon Kavathe Mahankal. 

This is significant as these are the first state elections after the split of the NCP last year, when Ajit joined forces with the BJP-Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde) alliance. In the Lok Sabha elections this year, the party had a humiliating defeat and was called the weak link in the alliance. 

But junior Pawar sprung into repair mode almost immediately, hiring political consultant Naresh Arora of DesignBoxed in July and undergoing a massive branding and makeover project. Much of it consisted of projecting Ajit as an approachable leader, particularly among women. From ads to clothes and posters, the colour pink dominated his electoral campaign. 

His victory ultimately means the defeat of Sharad Pawar, whose stature as a statesman across party lines has been overshadowed by his inability to retain hold over the NCP’s voters. His faction relied heavily on his legacy and the narrative of Ajit’s “betrayal” but failed to convince the voters. 

Last month, senior Pawar also hinted at likely hanging up his boots after the end of his current Rajya Sabha tenure in 2026.

‘BJP turned Ajit into weapon against Sharad’

According to Girish Kuber, editor of Loksatta and seasoned political analyst, the BJP’s survival in Maharashtra has historically hinged on opposing Sharad Pawar.

“BJP could not beat Sharad Pawar in his entire life. It got a taste of it only in 1995 when it ran a massive campaign against him,” said Kuber. “Its entire survival in Maharashtra revolves around being anti-Pawar. This time, it succeeded, but only by extracting a part of Pawar – Ajit– and using him as a weapon against his uncle.”

Kuber described Uddhav Thackeray’s loss as a “farce” but called Sharad Pawar’s a “tragedy,” considering his age and efforts. This was typical of the fate of Maharashtrian leaderships, he said, adding that “Shivaji, too, was more damaged by a member of his own family than the Mughals or other external forces.”

“He had hoped to disappear from the political horizon on a high, but that now seems unlikely,” said the political analyst. “While this is a big triumph for Ajit Pawar’s NCP, it is not the end - political parties never die, but yes, in our context, the winner does take it all. New chanakyas will emerge, as they always do. The difference between overconfidence and coincidence is the difference between success and failure. That’s the beauty of democracy.”

Anish Gawande, spokesperson of the NCP Sharad Pawar faction, acknowledged that they had failed to set a narrative in the election. He said that the party had let emotive issues take over substantial issues of development and policy. 

“This was an unexpected result that calls for introspection among all partners of the MVA, but we accept the verdict with humility and grace,” Gawande said. “We failed to see the impact of the Ladki Behena scheme, and it was our inability that we did not manage to convey to voters that we won’t just stop the scheme but we will double the amount. It’s also a telling sign that we failed to counter the narrative of batenge toh karenge and ek hai toh safe hai with a more constructive agenda of countering corruption, inflation, and unemployment.” 

When asked if this was the end for the NCP Sharad Pawar party, Gawande said that the main lessons from the Lok Sabha had been that “one shouldn’t write obituaries too soon,” and the same should be followed for them.

“Cash transfer schemes have a huge impact as you can see the cash in hand,” said political analyst Amitabh Tiwari. “If you had instead used this Rs 46 crore for launching something else for women and child development, the public would perceive that nothing is happening on ground.”

Tiwari said that while some of the credit could go to Ajit’s rebranding over the last four months, the main winning factor was that he had MLAs on his side. 

“The MLAs were strong candidates. In any government Ajit is in, he usually takes the finance ministry and makes sure his MLAs have enough resources. The anti-incumbency wasn’t visible in almost any seats the MLAs contested from. Sharad’s NCP, unfortunately, only got leftover candidates, no strong candidates. All they had was a photo of Sharad Pawar and an accusation of the other side being traitors.” 

Tiwari said that leaders of Sharad’s faction now have no option but to go to Ajit. “Sharar Pawar does not have many years left in his political career, and Supriya Sule is not a mass leader. They have no bargaining power left, and as a party, they are more or less finished.” 

The NCP led by Sharad Pawar had the best strike rate during the Lok Sabha elections, winning eight of the 10 seats it contested with a vote share of 10.27 percent. In the Maharashtra assembly elections, the party won 13 seats, with a vote share of 11.67 percent.

The decisive wins: Ajit outshines Sharad

A significant win for the junior Pawar has been his win in the Baramati constituency against his nephew Yugendra Pawar. He won by 1,00,899 votes in the NCP bastion. This was only months after his wife Sunetra Pawar lost the contest to Supriya Sule in the Baramati Lok Sabha seat – a fight Ajit publicly expressed regret for. 

In Parli, which has been a bastion for the Munde family for three decades, NCP’s Dhananjay Munde defeated NCP SP’s Rajasaheb Shrikishan Deshmukh by 1,40,224 votes. This is significant as Pankaja Munde, Dhananjay’s cousin and BJP leader, lost to the NCP SP in the recent Lok Sabha elections. 

Another notable seat that Ajit’s party won was the Anushakti Nagar constituency, where Nawab Malik’s daughter Sana Malik defeated actor Swara Bhaskar’s husband and Sharad faction’s leader Fahad Ahmad by a narrow margin of 3,378 votes. The losing faction has alleged EVM manipulation and demanded a recount of votes in three rounds. 

Tumsar remains the only seat out of the 36 where counting was still ongoing at the time of writing this report. Raju Karemore of the NCP is leading in the seat by 31,311 votes over opponent Charan Waghmare. 

Over at Scheduled Tribe-reserved Aheri, Atram Dharamrao Baba Atram of the NCP won by 16,814 votes against Bhagyashree Atram of NCP SP. In Pusad, NCP’s Indranail Naik won by a dominant lead of 90,769 votes, and the party’s Manikrao Kokate secured Sinnar with a lead of 40,884 votes over Sharad faction’s Uday Sangle, while NCP’s Narhari Zirwal won ST-reserved seat of Dindori by a comfortable margin of 44,403 votes against NCP SP’s Sunita Charoskar.

Other constituencies also saw decisive leads and victories for Ajit Pawar’s faction. In Basmath, NCP SP’s Jayprakash Dandegaonkar lost to NCP’s Chandrakant Nawghare by 29,588 votes, while in Yevla, NCP SP’s Manikrao Shinde trailed behind NCP’s Chhagan Bhujbal by 26,400 votes. 

In the Mumbai region, Sharad faction’s Jitendra Awhad was leading by an overwhelming 96,228 votes in Mumbra Kalwa.

In Shrivardhan, NCP’s Aditi Tatkare claimed a decisive victory with a margin of 82,798 votes against Sharad faction’s Anil Navgane, while the NCP’s Dnyaneshwar Katke won Shirur by 74,550 votes against NCP SP’s Ashok Pawar. At the time of writing this report, in the Scheduled Caste-reserved Pimpri seat, NCP SP’s Sulakshana Shilwant was trailing behind the Ajit faction’s Anna Bansode by 36,664 votes.

In Ahmednagar City, NCP’s Sangram Jagtap won by a 39,618-vote lead over Sharad faction’s Abhishek Kalamkar, while NCP’s Ashutosh Kale defeated NCP SP’s Sandeep Varpe in Kopargaon with a massive margin of 1,24,624 votes. In the SC-reserved constituency of Udgir, NCP SP’s Sudhakar Bhalerao was trailing behind the NCP’s Sanjay Bansode by a massive margin of 93,214 votes.

Ajit Pawar’s faction also performed strongly in constituencies like Wai, where Makrand Jadhav-Patil defeated the Sharad faction’s Aruna Devi Pisal by 61,392 votes. In Kagal, NCP’s Hasan Mushrif won by 11,518 votes, and Majalgaon was won by the NCP’s Prakash Solanke by 5,899 votes.

Besides the Mumbra Kalwa contest, the Sharad faction also won in Vadgaon Sheri, where Babusaheb Pathare led by 4,710 votes. Beed was won by NCP SP’s Sandeep Kshirsagar by 5,324 votes; the party’s Abhijeet Patil won Madha by over 30,000 votes; Islampur was secured by NCP SP’s Jayant Patil by over 13,000 votes; and Mohol was won by NCP SP’s Khare Raju Dnyanu by over 30,000 votes, and Rohit RR Patil won Tasgaon Kavathe Mahankal by 27,644 votes against the NCP’s Sanjaykaka Patil.

However, not all contests ended in favour of either faction. In Junnar, both the NCP SP’s Satyashil Sherkar and the Ajit faction’s Atul Benke trailed behind independent candidate Sharaddada Bhimaji Sonawale, who was leading by 7,143 votes. Similarly, in Chandgad, independent candidate Shivaji Shahttupa Patil led with 24,147 votes, with Ajit’s faction in the second place.

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