Ordinarily, the villagers from Jogwadi, struggling with water woes and related agrarian crises, could not have cared less about the intra-family politics of a plush Mumbai-based fabrics conglomerate. However, the father-son feud struck a chord.
It was, after all, just a metaphor for a similar legacy battle playing out much closer to home. This one, between an uncle and his nephew, whose relationship has been compared to that of father and son — Sharad Pawar and Ajit Pawar.
Baramati, the traditional bastion of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Pawar family in Maharashtra politics, is witnessing a first-of-its-kind clash that has thrown a spanner in the works within the party cadre and divided the voters as well as members of the Pawar family.
Two NCPs are contesting against each other. One is led by Baramati MLA Ajit Pawar, who the Election Commission and the Maharashtra Speaker have recognised as the ‘real’ NCP, giving it the party’s original symbol — the clock. The second is the faction led by Sharad Pawar, who had founded the undivided NCP in 1999.
The Ajit Pawar-led NCP, which is in an alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena, has fielded Ajit Pawar’s wife, Sunetra Pawar, from the Baramati Lok Sabha seat. Sunetra, a social worker, is a debutante in politics. The Sharadchandra Pawar faction, in alliance with the Opposition Congress and Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), has fielded Supriya Sule, the incumbent three-time MP from the constituency and Sharad Pawar’s daughter.
This political feud has one family member pitted against another. Uncle Sharad Pawar has been a father figure to five-term Maharashtra Deputy CM Ajit Pawar ever since he lost his own father, Anantrao Pawar, when he was just out of his teens. Sunetra Pawar is Supriya Sule’s sister-in-law, or vahini, as the Marathi term goes, who until the 2019 Lok Sabha election was campaigning for her current rival. Moreover, Ajit Pawar’s brother, Shrinivas Pawar, his wife Sharmila and their son Yugendra have aligned themselves with the Sharad Pawar faction, at least for this election.
On paper, the battle lines are clearly drawn between Sunetra Pawar, popularly known as vahini in Baramati, and Sule, popularly known as tai. But, on the ground, the lines are blurred and the contest brings its own nuances, for the campaigners as well as the electorate. There are core issues, such as the lack of sufficient water for agriculture and for drinking purposes, which is a constant complaint across villages in the Baramati belt. But in the rhetoric, these have taken a backseat.
“It is not about vahini or tai or what they promise. It is about dada (Ajit Pawar) and saheb (Sharad Pawar). Ajit dada has done a lot for Baramati, but how can we disrespect saheb?” asks Sanjay Bhosale, former sarpanch of Jogwadi.
The Ajit Pawar-led NCP’s campaign is about talking up the leader’s work in Baramati, explaining to people how it is helpful to be on the same side as the party leading the Union government to ensure development, and how the old must go, giving younger leaders a chance.
Besides Sule’s work as an MP for 15 years, the campaign for the NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) is based on a sentimental appeal — about how the 83-year-old patriarch of not just the Pawar family, but also of Baramati, was wronged by one of his very own. Additionally, this faction also has the burden of popularising a new symbol — the tutari (a traditional wind instrument) — with the NCP’s clock symbol now belonging to the Ajit Pawar-led party.
Also Read: Was happy with social work, entered politics to support husband, says Ajit Pawar’s wife Sunetra
Pawar vs Pawar
At Baramati’s Bhigwan Chowk, a woman walks into a ground floor office with a clock symbol asking for someone from Sule’s team. A karyakarta greets her and then patiently explains that this is the office of the Ajit Pawar faction.
“Don’t worry. It is an honest mistake,” he adds with a smile. This confusion is apparent on multiple occasions.
The office of the NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) faction is a short walk away. Here, one karyakarta is speaking about “vahini’s campaign”. He quickly adds for clarity, “Not vahini (Sunetra Pawar), I am talking about Ajit dada’s vahini (Sharmila Pawar).”
Sharmila is campaigning deep inside rural Baramati, going from village to village and holding meetings with small groups of people, like she did in Jogwadi. “We were urging Ajit dada not to put up a candidate from the family. Had he fielded anyone else, we wouldn’t have campaigned against him. We would have just stayed away from campaigning. But we were forced to pick sides within the family and a defeat of Supriya will mean a defeat of saheb (Sharad Pawar), and that is something that we can’t bear,” Sharmila tells ThePrint over a quick lunch.
She says she and her husband, Shrinivas, were present when Ajit Pawar took oath for a brief term as deputy chief minister with Devendra Fadnavis as CM in 2019. That government lasted all of 72 hours.
“We had decided to support him at the time because he is our elder brother. He must have had his reasons. Even today, he must have his reasons. I don’t want to get into the politics of it. But what we can’t bear is that it is now a campaign (by the Mahayuti) to dislodge saheb from Baramati,” Sharmila says, adding that it was her son, Yugendra, who took the first step in supporting Sharad Pawar within her family.
Yugendra helps with Shrinivas and Sharmila Pawar’s business empire — the Sharayu Group of Companies — and is also involved in social work in Baramati through the Sharayu Foundation.
Like Yugendra, another great-nephew of Sharad Pawar, Karjat Jamkhed MLA Rohit Pawar and his parents, Sunanda and Rajendra Pawar, are also campaigning for Sule.
The only members of the Pawar family visibly on Ajit Pawar’s side in this electoral battle are his sons, Parth and Jay Pawar.
Their mother, Sunetra Pawar, says, “Jay is handling my campaigning, he is conducting rallies, meeting people. Dada (Ajit Pawar) is handling the responsibility for the entire state, and I am also very busy, so someone or the other needs to manage the backstage, so Parth is doing that.”
Ajit Pawar, in his meetings and rallies in Baramati, has tried to stress on the fact that his wife is as much a Pawar as any of them. Last week, he told party workers to “vote for a Pawar” in the Sule vs Pawar contest. He said that they had voted for the son (referring to himself) in 1991, when Ajit Pawar started his political career as a Lok Sabha MP, then the father (Sharad Pawar), then the daughter (Sule), and now they should vote for the daughter-in-law.
Ajit Pawar was elected as the MP for Baramati in 1991, vacating his seat for his uncle to contest in a bypoll the same year. Since then, barring a two-year period between 1994 and 1996, the Pawar family has always represented Baramati in Parliament.
On their part, both Sunetra Pawar and Sule say family relations have not been hampered because of this peculiar slugfest. They deflect any questions about each other with perfunctory responses.
Sule says, “Relations have not been impacted from my side. As a person grows older, we are supposed to grow wiser.”
On Sule’s performance as an MP for 15 years, Sunetra Pawar simply says, “A lot of work that people felt should have been done has not been done.”
Moreover, besides some initial criticism — when Sule took an indirect swipe at Sunetra Pawar in a rally telling people that she doesn’t send her husband to ask for votes for her — the Pawar daughter and daughter-in-law have refrained from pulling each other down.
Also Read: ‘Fight is against ideology, not a person,’ says Supriya Sule on Baramati face-off with sister-in-law
Ajit Pawar and Baramati
NCP workers who have aligned themselves with Ajit Pawar like to argue that the Baramati MLA has been wronged and isolated by his family.
“He also told all our booth committee members in several meetings that his extended family has deserted him and that we are his family, his strength in this election,” says a senior party worker who is close to Sule but has opted to support Ajit Pawar.
What Ajit Pawar supporters like to highlight is that all former and current office holders from the NCP — heads of zilla parishads, agriculture market committees, sugar cooperatives and banks, and so on — are with the deputy CM. Neither voters nor the cadre from the rival side attempt to dispute this claim. Even within the undivided NCP, Ajit Pawar was the de facto head of Baramati, earning the support of people as well as party cadre with his constant field visits and focus on the taluka’s development.
There are two perspectives to this. NCP workers supporting Sule’s campaign say Ajit Pawar was Sharad Pawar’s trusted lieutenant. The narrative of Sule’s campaigners around Baramati is that “Pawar saheb and Supriya tai” put blind faith in Ajit Pawar, letting him take care of the taluka and not interfering with his work. This made Ajit Pawar a more popular face there, but they didn’t mind. But then there came a day when Ajit Pawar turned around and expressed a desire to politically evict their saheb and tai from Baramati.
This is also what Sharmila Pawar was trying to get at with her Singhania story in Jogwadi. In 2015, Vijaypat Singhania gave his entire 37 percent stake in Raymond to his younger son, Gautam Singhania. Two years later, the father accused his son of driving him out of the family residence. Then again, in November last year, in an interview with Business Today, Vijaypat said he made the “stupid mistake” of giving everything to his son, alleging that Gautam ousted him from all aspects of the company.
The second perspective, reiterated time and again by the Ajit Pawar camp, is that by toiling hard, their dada ensured that the Baramati bastion remained the family’s turf, which allowed Sharad Pawar to focus on the larger political strategy and Sule to build herself as an able parliamentarian in Delhi.
“This is true not just for Baramati, but even for elsewhere in Maharashtra. Dada would always be in touch with MLAs, while we barely got the opportunity to meet or speak with Pawar saheb. If there was anything we needed done, all we had to do was mention it once to dada and our issues or demands would be immediately addressed. But, when the time came, he was not given his due,” Dilip Mohite Patil, MLA from Khed Alandi in Pune district, told ThePrint. His assembly segment falls under the Shirur Lok Sabha constituency, which neighbours Baramati.
In June last year, less than a month before Ajit Pawar rebelled against his uncle with a majority of MLAs to join the ruling coalition in Maharashtra, octogenarian Sharad Pawar indicated passing on the baton to his daughter Sule, overlooking the prodigal nephew.
Pawar senior named Sule one of NCP’s two working presidents, giving her responsibility for the party’s affairs in Maharashtra. He also put her in charge of the party’s central election authority.
In Baramati, Ajit Pawar’s foot soldiers are campaigning on the basis of his accessibility and developmental work in the taluka.
In Palshi, another village in the Baramati taluka, a battery of local functionaries address a group of about 30-odd villagers sitting in a courtyard outside a small temple. One of the party workers stands up with several loose papers in his hands.
“A road at Morgaon… Rs 10 lakh, a road to the cremation ground… Rs 20 lakh, open gym… Rs 7 lakh, a bridge on the Palshi-Morgaon road… Rs 70 lakh…,” he reads out. The itemised list pertains to the works and funds sanctioned for the Palshi village alone in the last five years.
“We are just 1,700 voters, but the village got Rs 58 crore in funds over the past five years. It is all because of Ajit dada and the stance he has taken now (of splitting from the Sharad Pawar-led party and joining hands with the ruling BJP and Shinde-led Shiv Sena) from the perspective of ensuring our development,” the party worker concludes in his booming voice.
Then, Vishwas Devkate, former Pune Zilla Parishad chairman who was apparently handpicked for the post by Ajit Pawar, stands up and vouches for how their dada “can go to any length to fulfil the dreams and requests of his karyakartas”. He says that just like he has been made the zilla parishad chairman, others addressing the small campaign meeting have also been given official positions on sugar and bank cooperatives.
Both sides have worked out their political arithmetic to clinch the Baramati Lok Sabha seat, which comprises six assembly segments. Of these, two (Daund and Khadakwasla) are held by the BJP, two (Bhor and Purandar) by the Congress and two (Baramati and Indapur) by the Ajit Pawar-led NCP. The BJP votes should transfer to Sunetra Pawar, while the Congress votes ought to go to Sule. A vast majority of Sule’s victory margin of 1.55 lakh votes came from Baramati, and it is these votes that both the sides are trying hard to earn.
Meanwhile, voters are in a state of confusion. Many believe in Ajit Pawar, but don’t want to be instrumental in Sharad Pawar’s loss. Some say they will side with the uncle this time and with the nephew in the state polls later this year. Most want to keep their cards to themselves, even when campaigners from both sides urge them to declare their loyalty.
“Earlier (under the undivided NCP) it was so simple. Even if our entire village had decided not to turn up to vote, Ajit dada and Supriya tai would be confident of winning,” says Kamalrao Patil from the Jogwadi village. “This time, every vote will count.”
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)
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