By Lekha Rattanani
A sudden death of a top politician in an air crash naturally causes deep distress and brings big uncertainties in the political arena, particularly when the politician is in the saddle but placed uncomfortably in a difficult political alliance in a key state. This is the broad picture that stares Maharashtra with the death of Ajit Pawar in an air crash this week in Baramati, the home ground of his uncle and senior leader Sharad Pawar. There is much speculation on the circumstances leading to the crash, but it is best not to fall prey to surmises, conjectures and quick conclusions. Investigations must be allowed to take their course and brought to their logical conclusions. All sides must be investigated, including whether the correct and timely weather data and concomitant advisories on landing or diverting the flight were given to the flight crew of the ill-fated Learjet45.
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That said, the sudden death of Ajit Pawar complicates the political picture in Maharashtra in innumerable ways. There is of course the immediate question of how Ajit Pawar’s flock of 41 MLAs and many other supporters would lean with his passing. Will they for sheer emotional reasons turn back to Sharad Pawar, from whose Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) they broke off in the first place in their quest for power and new frontiers with the BJP?
The BJP surely would want to keep the government running with NCP support, but what are the implications of winning this support if it is not forthcoming for any reason and given the speculation that Ajit Pawar was open to returning to his uncle’s fold sooner rather than later.
Without making any comments on the politics of Ajit Pawar, the pressures that would have forced him to break up with his uncle were already in some ways playing in the reverse in recent months. It is said that a mix of family pressures and pragmatic calculations to return to the fold were already in the air. Recently, when 29 civic bodies went to the polls in Maharashtra, the Pawars contested the Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad elections together, giving rise to speculation about the two factions re-uniting. The Pawars draw much of their political strength from Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad. Pune district is their home turf.
Elections to 12 Zilla Parishad and 125 Panchayat Samitis are due. Campaigning for the polls to be held on February 05 was what brought Ajit Pawar to Baramati, which falls in Pune district and is a prominent agrarian, industrial and educational hub some 100 Km from Pune city.
Though the NCP (as also the Shiv Sena) was split in the clear light of the machinations of the BJP, affection in the family for Ajit Pawar and respect for Sharad Pawar was untouched by this ugly split. Supriya Sule, Sharad Pawar’s daughter and Lok Sabha MP, continued to persevere and worked to keep the family intact even if political realities dictated otherwise.
Since the 2019 Assembly polls, the state has seen changes in government that did not involve elections. In 2023, after he broke away taking a faction of the NCP with him, Ajit Pawar returned to the fold. He then split again, this time engaging in a controversial, extremely brief swearing in. After the November 2024 Assembly elections, he retained his place as deputy Chief Minister, sharing it with Eknath Shinde, who was relegated to deputy Chief Minister.
It is well known that an unhappy Shinde, who earlier served as Chief Minister after dramatically splitting the Shiv Sena and breaking away from Uddhav Thackeray, has been potential trouble for Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. The CM has had to play a delicate balancing act between all the associates of his BJP-led Mahayuti alliance.
Matters are further complicated now because if the NCP MLAs break base, the BJP will not like it, the Pawars will be watching, and more importantly, whatever happens here will influence the way the breakaway Shiv Sena of Eknath Shinde takes its course of action for the medium and longer term. Terms between the Uddhav Thackeray Shiv Sena and the Eknath Shinde Shiv Sena are not cordial. There is bitterness here, but who is to say what will transpire if dynamics change and new realities emerge in the arena for power play that Maharashtra has become.
This is the price the State pays for becoming a bitter battleground that saw the alarming and unprecedented games of the powers that be engineering a split, taking MLAs away to Surat and then to Assam as it conjured up plans to form a government in the State, and then taking the new alignments into the polls. This is one State that many will be watching for signals on what it means to run governments with breakaway factions and engineer new alliances.
The writer is the Managing Editor of The Billion Press
