Mumbai: As the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) MLAs started streaming into Devgiri, Ajit Pawar’s official residence in South Mumbai, Sunday morning, they saw quite a few Sharad Pawar loyalists in the room — starting with the NCP chief’s daughter Supriya Sule to his close confidantes Dilip Walse Patil, Chhagan Bhujbal, and Praful Patel.
Some of these are leaders Ajit Pawar has never particularly gotten along with in the party.
“So, when Ajit dada told us that we have to join the government that afternoon, all of us assumed it was with Pawar saheb’s (Sharad Pawar) blessings,” said one of the 33 NCP MLAs present at Devgiri Sunday to ThePrint, requesting anonymity. “We were never explicitly told that the NCP President was not backing the plan and did not find out about it till he publicly distanced himself from what we had done.”
Twenty-four hours after the Ajit Pawar-led rebellion — when he took oath as deputy chief minister in the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government —there is still no clarity on exactly how many MLAs are with him. While the MLAs will eventually pick sides, many feel like they’re caught in the middle.
“It is certain that Ajit dada’s importance in the party was being reduced. But, for so many years, Pawar saheb and Ajit dada never showed their differences openly, now the differences have come to the fore and they seem irreparable,” a second MLA present at the Devgiri meeting told ThePrint.
Sharad Pawar and Ajit Pawar’s conflict is the latest uncle-nephew battle to end in an open rebellion in a state that has seen a string of uncle-nephew political slugfests.
“The problem is that the old guard doesn’t retire. They groom these nephews to follow in their footsteps, but never make space to accommodate their political ambitions. And when these ambitions start besting these patriarchs, they prop up their kin as a counter, creating conflicts,” Abhay Deshpande, political commentator, said to ThePrint.
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NCP’s family feud
There has always been an undercurrent of conflict between the Pawar uncle and nephew, though it had never boiled over to an open rebellion until now, with the exception of a 72-hour revolt in 2019. Back then, when the state elections had resulted in a hung assembly, Ajit Pawar had taken a few NCP MLAs with him to form a government with the BJP and take oath as Deputy CM with Fadnavis as CM. The MLAs, one by one, had returned to the Sharad Pawar fold, forcing Ajit Pawar to resign and follow suit.
Fadnavis has, in media interviews, claimed that Sharad Pawar was part of that plan, but backed out at the eleventh hour, while the octogenarian has called it a strategy to end the presidential rule and clear the way for the formation of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government, comprising the Shiv Sena (then undivided), the NCP and Congress.
“When Ajit Pawar returned to the party fold under Sharad Pawar, he deliberately made him Deputy CM in the Uddhav Thackeray-led MVA regime,” said Deshpande. “It was not because of any affection or emotional sentiment towards his nephew. It was basic political strategy. Sharad Pawar knew his nephew’s political ambitions and also what could happen if he didn’t accommodate them.”
Ajit Pawar first entered politics in 1991 as the chairman of the Pune district cooperative bank. The same year, he became a Lok Sabha MP from the family turf of Baramati on a Congress ticket. He gave up the seat for his uncle to be elected and he successfully contested the state polls from the Baramati assembly constituency that year. He has held on to the constituency ever since.
Loyalists of Ajit Pawar in the NCP say his first public sign of any displeasure with Sharad Pawar’s decision making was in 2004 when the NCP Chief had decided to appoint R.R. Patil in the Congress-NCP government, overlooking Ajit Pawar.
Since then, there have been several incidents where the uncle and nephew have not been on the same page.
Ajit Pawar has also spoken publicly multiple times on how the NCP had erred in giving up the CM’s post in 2004 despite having more seats than the Congress, show media reports. After the 2014 assembly polls, party sources said, Ajit Pawar was one of the strongest voices in the party to advocate joining hands with the BJP to form a government in Maharashtra.
In 2019, the uncle and nephew clashed on the party’s flag, when Ajit Pawar had in 2019 declared that the NCP will sport a saffron flag and senior Pawar had said the decision was in his “personal capacity”.
The same year, the two Pawars had a simmering rift over Ajit Pawar’s son Parth Pawar’s demand to contest the Lok Sabha polls. Parth did eventually contest the poll and created history as the only Pawar to lose an election.
In his early days in politics, many had hailed the nephew as Sharad Pawar’s heir apparent. But Supriya Sule’s entry into politics in 2006 shook that idea.
Political commentator Pratap Asbe said to ThePrint, “There weren’t open disagreements between Sharad Pawar and Ajit Pawar, but Supriya Sule’s influence was on the rise and a fear psychosis grows out of such things.”
Maharashtra’s uncle-nephew tiffs
As legend goes, the words ‘Kaka mala vachva’ (uncle, save me) can still be heard reverberating through the walls of Pune’s Shaniwar Wada, the seat of Peshwas, on some nights. Back in the 1700s, Maharashtra saw one of the most brutal uncle-nephew feuds when Raghunathrao, who coveted the throne, planned the assassination of the ninth Peshwa, his nephew Narayanrao, and turned a deaf ear to his cries for help.
The game of thrones has continued into modern politics as well, though it is not quite as barbaric as the Raghunathrao-Narayanrao conflict.
Uncle-nephew fights over power have been a common occurrence across the country, with Shivpal and Akhilesh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh, K. Chandrashekar Rao and his nephew T. Harish Rao in Telangana, and Abhay and Dushyant Chautala in Haryana. But, with Maharashtra having multiple significant political families with many satraps, these kinds of political clashes are more evident.
The most infamous fight has been that of Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray and his nephew Raj Thackeray. In 2005, Raj walked out of the Shiv Sena with a number of party leaders and workers in tow after his uncle clearly marked his son Uddhav Thackeray as his successor.
In 2006, Raj Thackeray formed his Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), which initially tasted success but has, for a decade now, been a faint shadow of its original self with just one MLA in the state legislative assembly.
Similarly, in Beed district, BJP’s Munde family, too, faced an internal revolt when Dhananjay Munde quit the party in 2013 after it was clear that his uncle Gopinath Munde intended to pass on his political legacy to his daughters — Pritam and Pankaja. Dhananjay joined the NCP and was part of Ajit Pawar’s rebellion in 2019 as well as now. He was one of the nine NCP ministers to be sworn into the Eknath Shinde-led cabinet.
Then ahead of the 2019 state polls, there was a split in the Tatkare family of the NCP when Avdhoot Tatkare, Sunil Tatkare’s nephew, joined the Uddhav Thackeray-led then undivided Shiv Sena with his father, Anil Tatkare, following differences with his uncle.
In October last year, Avdhoot, a former MLA from the Shrivardhan assembly seat in the Konkan region, defected to the BJP. Sunil Tatkare is among the NCP leaders part of the Ajit Pawar-led rebellion. His daughter, Aditi, was sworn in as the first woman minister in the Shinde-Fadnavis government.
Then in 2022, when the Shiv Sena split following Eknath Shinde’s rebellion, it kickstarted another uncle-nephew conflict within the Thackeray family. Nihar Thackeray, son of Uddhav’s brother Bindumadhav Thackeray who died in 1996, openly supported the Shinde-led Shiv Sena. He was also part of the team of lawyers that fought the party’s case in the Supreme Court regarding the disqualification petitions filed by the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray).
Meanwhile, the most recent uncle-nephew revolt in Maharashtra is still too early to call.
Political analyst Asbe said, “All eyes are on how much support Sharad Pawar and Ajit Pawar seem to be getting from people. NCP MLAs will decide which side they want to stick with accordingly.”
“As of now, it’s just a wait and watch,” he added.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
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