Mumbai: An heir apparent, a nephew waiting for his turn at the helm and a patriarch who keeps everyone guessing over his next move. At some point, this could have described either of the two preeminent regional parties in Maharashtra — the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). Of these two family-driven parties, one has dominated the news cycle over the past week due to its leader’s sudden announcement to relinquish control of the party he founded in 1999 after breaking away from the Congress.
Hundreds of party workers and supporters had gathered at the Y.B. Chavan Centre in Mumbai’s Nariman Point on 2 May for the launch of an updated edition of NCP chief Sharad Pawar’s autobiography. This is where, while on live TV, 82-year-old Pawar announced his decision to step down as president of the NCP. Three days later, he reneged on his decision, citing a resolution passed by the 18-member panel of senior party leaders.
Only a handful of people had been in the know about Pawar’s resignation and subsequent turnabout.
Like the state of Maharashtra, which came into being on 1 May, 1960, Pawar’s political career too took shape around the same time, since it was on this day that he became a member of the Pune City Youth Congress.
Within a few years, he was president of the Maharashtra Pradesh Youth Congress.
Over the six decades that followed, Pawar emerged as one the most nimble political operatives in the country. During this time, he became chief minister of Maharashtra four times, Union minister twice and leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha.
Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi had admitted in 2016 that it was Pawar who ‘held his hand and taught him to walk in his early days in Gujarat’.
In 1999, Pawar parted ways with the Congress (INC) and formed the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), of which he continues to serve as president even 24 years later. Respected across party lines, Pawar still has three years left in his current Rajya Sabha term.
His daughter Supriya Sule is a third-time MP from Baramati, an NCP stronghold, while his nephew and former deputy CM Ajit Pawar is the MLA from Baramati and leader of the Opposition in the Maharashtra assembly.
Three generations of the Pawar family are now in active politics with Pawar’s grandnephew Rohit’s election as a first-time MLA from Karjat Jamkhed seat in 2019. But allegations of the NCP being a dynasty-driven party have done little to offset Pawar’s hold over the party.
“I am very proud of whose daughter I am. I am not ashamed about it at all. I am proud of the house I was born in,” Supriya Sule had said in Parliament last February.
However, the family’s six-decade tryst with public life has been marred with multiple allegations, ranging from corruption to land ownership in different parts of the country to charges against Pawar being a political gymnast.
In his autobiography, Pawar wrote, “In politics, one should be careful of not letting the competition know your future strategies. And I have that knack. When your side is weak, the competition should not know what you will do next and they remain confused. That is when you can be four steps ahead of them.”
Elaborating on this further, an NCP functionary, who wished to not be named, told ThePrint, “The left side of Pawar saheb’s brain does not know what the right side is thinking.”
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Sharad Pawar: YB Chavan’s protégé
A cancer survivor, Pawar leads a disciplined life and is ready to meet people as early as 7 am each morning, despite health difficulties.
He was the eighth of Govindrao and Shardabai Pawar’s 11 children — seven boys and four girls. His parents, who, according to his autobiography, were communists, believed all their children must be educated and independent. His mother was also associated with the Peasants and Workers Party (PWP).
Pawar’s eldest brother Vasantrao was a noted Pune-based lawyer. While his other brother Suryakant Pawar is an architect, their younger brother Pratap Pawar is an educationist who is also the owner of the Sakal Media Group which publishes the Marathi daily Sakal and operates the regional Marathi news channel Saam TV.
Of Pawar’s four sisters — Sarla Jagtap, Saroj Patil, Meena Jagdhane and Nila Sasane — Patil was the only one with ties to public life owing to her marriage with four-time PWP legislator late Narayan Patil, a towering figure in the state’s Left movement. Although Pawar and Patil had ideological differences, it did not in any way affect their relationship, wrote the NCP chief.
“Our family has a good tradition. One can be anywhere in the world but during Diwali, for those four-five days, everyone should assemble at our house,” Pawar wrote in his autobiography.
Pawar was regarded as a protégé of Yashwantrao Chavan, the last chief minister of Bombay State. His first stint as a lawmaker was in 1967, when he was elected to the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly from Baramati at the age of 27. In his second election in 1972 when he campaigned on agrarian issues, Pawar was elected with an even higher margin of votes.
In 1978, he led a rebellion of 38 Congress MLAs to topple the Vasantdada Patil government and became the youngest chief minister of the state after entering into a coalition with the Janata Party. Many in political circles recalled this rebellion when Eknath Shinde broke away from the Uddhav Thackeray-led faction of the Shiv Sena in June last year.
Pawar returned to the Congress fold in 1987. He then became chief minister of Maharashtra twice (1988 and 1990) before joining the Narasimha Rao-led Congress government as defence minister in 1991. He served his third term as CM from 1993 till 1995.
In 1999, Pawar was expelled from the Congress, along with P.A. Sangma and Tariq Anwar, for opposing Sonia Gandhi’s candidature for the top post. Sangma and Pawar went on to form the NCP, but entered into a post-poll alliance with the Congress after the 1999 assembly elections to keep the Shiv Sena-BJP combine out of power.
In 2004, he was appointed minister for agriculture, consumer affairs, food and public distribution in the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government — portfolios he retained till 2014.
Pratibha Pawar — ‘force to reckon with’
During the course of Pawar’s political career spanning over six decades, his wife Pratibha emerged as a key pillar of support. Daughter of Sadashiv Shinde, a former cricketer who died young and left behind a wife and four children, Pratibha married Pawar in 1967.
Speaking to ThePrint, political commentator Sanjay Jog described Pratibha Pawar as a “simple, down to earth lady who stayed away from the limelight of politics but is a force to reckon with”.
She has taken care of the household and holds it together, he added.
For their daughter Supriya’s wedding, Pratibha had worn a simple cream-coloured saree with a gold border and a string of pearls around her neck, despite the wedding being a grand affair, said the NCP functionary quoted earlier.
At the launch of the updated edition of Pawar’s autobiography on 2 May, senior journalist Girish Kuber recalled the NCP chief saying that it was Pratibha who drove Supriya Sule to school when Pawar was CM.
In his autobiography, Pawar even gave Pratibha the credit for convincing nephew Ajit Pawar to return to the NCP fold after his short-lived rebellion in the aftermath of the 2019 Maharashtra Assembly elections.
Supriya Sule — the heir apparent
By anointing their children as their political heirs, elected representatives in India have proved, more often than not, that blood is thicker than water.
In the case of the NCP, Ajit Pawar enjoyed a good run within the party until Supriya Sule’s entry into public life with her election as the Lok Sabha MP from Baramati in 2009.
According to Sharad Pawar, Sule — at least for now — is not interested in taking up an administrative role within the party and instead wants to focus on shoring up the party’s prospects in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. However, that she was considered for the top post gives way to the possibility that Sule might in the future be appointed Pawar’s political heir.
Sule has always maintained that she shares a strong bond with cousin Ajit Pawar. When Ajit Pawar rebelled in 2019, Sule famously put up a status on WhatsApp that read: “party and family split”. And upon his return to the NCP fold days later, Sule took the lead in welcoming Ajit Pawar and the rebel MLAs in an apparent show of strength aimed at reinforcing the belief that despite their differences, the Pawars would stand by each other.
A three-time parliamentarian, Sule — just like her father — is known to have ties cutting across party lines. Her friends include Neeraj Shekhar, now BJP Rajya Sabha MP, Omar Abdullah of the National Conference, and BJP’s Poonam Mahajan, among others.
Sule has been described as being accessible and affable, cooperative rather than competitive, relaxed and not rough-and-ready. She is also fluent in Marathi, Hindi and English, unlike her cousin Ajit Pawar, who prefers Marathi and Hindi.
Sule also routinely picks up on urban issues and in January 2019 introduced a Private Member’s Bill in Parliament called the Right to Disconnect Bill, aimed at bringing attention to work-life balance.
Besides urban issues, Sule has been vocal on issues related to women, religious tolerance, education and agriculture.
The NCP functionary quoted earlier said Sule never misses a session of Parliament. In 2022, she was among the 10 parliamentarians awarded the ‘Sansad Ratna’ award by not-for-profit organisation, the Prime Point Foundation.
Sadanand Sule — the son-in-law
Her husband Sadanand Sule, the son of former Mahindra and Mahindra managing director Bhalchandra R. Sule, is a businessman who has maintained his distance from public life. Theirs was a love marriage.
“But over the years, Pawar’s trust grew on Sule to the extent that now Sadanand Sule’s advice is taken into consideration by Pawar,” said Jog.
He added that though Sadanand does not speak much, the manner in which he defended Sule after Sena leader Abdul Sattar’s allegedly derogatory remarks against her last November shows that he is her pillar.
The couple, however, is no stranger to controversy. In 2012, a former IAS officer of the Maharashtra cadre had dragged Supriya and Sadanand into the Lavasa controversy. Lavasa, an under-construction township near Pune, was originally visualised by Sharad Pawar. Supriya Sule and husband Sadanand were stakeholders in the project.
Construction of the township was halted owing to lack of environmental clearances and reports of alleged financial irregularities. Years later, Supriya Sule was quoted as saying that her husband had “very very nominal” shares in Lavasa which he sold “ages ago”.
Sule’s name also surfaced in connection with an unsuccessful bid by the Pune-based City Corporation for an IPL team in 2010. She said at the time that members of her family were “a minor stakeholder in the company” and that the bid was made without the permission of its board.
That same year, she had denied charges of impropriety stemming from her father-in-law’s involvement with a business consortium which owned a third of the company that secured the broadcasting rights to all Indian Premier League (IPL) matches.
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Ajit Pawar — successor in waiting
The son of Sharad Pawar’s brother late Anantrao, Ajit has been waiting for his turn at the head of the table for over three decades now. In terms of seniority within the party, he is second only to Sharad Pawar.
But senior Pawar has so far shied away from declaring Ajit the heir to his political legacy, fully aware of what a battle for succession involving a natural heir and a nephew did to the Shiv Sena. When Sena patriarch Bal Thackeray chose his son Uddhav to lead the party instead of nephew Raj Thackeray, the latter broke away and formed his own party — the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) — albeit with little electoral success.
In his autobiography, Sharad Pawar brushed aside the issue of succession by writing that “he or she will emerge with time”. A clear indicator that Supriya Sule is as much in the race for the top job as nephew Ajit Pawar.
While one cannot deny that Ajit Pawar enjoys the support of a section within the NCP, it is also evident that he is vying for the endorsement of more party leaders in order to be able to take decisions independently.
When he took the early-morning oath as deputy chief minister to Devendra Fadnavis of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in November 2019, despite talks underway for the formation of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance, Ajit Pawar only had the support of 10 NCP MLAs.
According to reports, the rebel MLAs later told Sharad Pawar that they were under the impression that the move had his sanction. Within hours of the oath-taking ceremony, more than half of them returned to the party, “taking the steam out of the rebellion”, Pawar wrote in his autobiography.
Ajit Pawar is known in Maharashtra’s political circles as an able administrator, though some say he is aggressive and arrogant. If he decides to part ways or split the NCP, Ajit Pawar will be on his own, since his vote-catching abilities are limited compared to his uncle’s.
It is also known that come polling day, most NCP MLAs seek votes in the name of ‘Pawar saheb’. For instance, when former NCP leader Udayanraje Bhosale joined hands with the BJP ahead of the assembly elections in 2019, he lost to the candidate who had Pawar’s endorsement.
Moreover, Ajit Pawar’s image also took a hit owing to allegations against him of involvement in an irrigation scam. He was, however, given a clean chit by the Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) in the three days after joining hands with the BJP in 2019.
The bottom line is, though Ajit Pawar’s actions are more of an attempt to assert his presence within the NCP, an all-out rebellion by him — like the one Shinde engineered last year — will raise questions on Sharad Pawar’s ability to maintain a firm grip on his party.
Third generation: Rohit & Parth Pawar
At the forefront of the fourth generation of the Pawar family is Rohit, the son of Pawar’s nephew Rajendra.
Rohit is the grandson of agriculturist and Padma Shri recipient Dr Dinkarrao Govindrao Pawar. A 2007 Bachelor of Management Studies (BMS) graduate from the University of Mumbai, he became the CEO of Baramati Agro Pvt Ltd at the age of 21. He also served as the youngest president of the Indian Sugar Mill Association (ISMA) during 2018-19.
In 2017, he was elected to the Pune Zilla Parishad with a record number of votes. Rohit won his first assembly election in 2019 from Karjat Jamkhed — a BJP bastion — by defeating Ram Shinde, a minister in the Fadnavis government. He is said to have been groomed by Sharad Pawar himself.
He was elected president of the Maharashtra Cricket Association (MCA) in January of this year and seems to be following in the footsteps of his great uncle, who was once chairman of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and later president of the International Cricket Council (ICC).
The other prominent name in the third generation of the family is Ajit Pawar’s son Parth, whose political career is yet to take off. Parth contested the Lok Sabha polls in 2019 from Maval and lost, making him the only member of the Pawar family to have lost an election.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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