The Congress - which contested last week's Maharashtra municipal elections on its own and finished a surprising third, albeit well behind arch-rival BJP and its ally, the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena - will now also go it alone for elections to 12 district councils and panchayat samitis.
Voting for 12 zilla parishads and 125 panchayat samitis across the Raigad, Ratnagiri, Sindhudurg, Pune, Satara, Sangli, Kolhapur, Solapur, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Dharashiv, Latur, and Parbhani districts will take place on February 5. Results will be out on February 7.
The decision, sources said, was taken at a meeting of the party's state unit in Mumbai.
The Congress, sources said, had decided against renewing ties with the Sharad Pawar after a squabble over a political realignment involving him and his nephew, Ajit Pawar.
The Pawars - driven apart after Ajit rebelled against Sharad and sided with the BJP - re-united for the Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad municipal polls, after being brought together by factors that included tension between the nephew and the BJP and the big Thackeray family reunion.
However, the uncle and nephew pairing flopped in both elections, finishing 92 seats behind the BJP in Pune and 47 behind in Pimpri- Chinchwad, both considered Pawar political strongholds.
Unwilling to count on Ajit Pawar's NCP faction - technically still a member of the BJP-led Mahayuti alliance in power in Maharashtra - as an ally for the 29 municipal polls last week, the Congress did not contest those elections with Sharad Pawar in its camp or by its side.
And the party, sources said, has made it clear it will still not consider any alliance with Ajit Pawar or his NCP, meaning there will, once again, be no understanding with Sharad Pawar.
The Congress could, however, re-align with another former ally - the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena faction - and continue its ties with a regional party - Prakash Ambedkar's Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi. The Congress had opted not to ally with Uddhav Thackeray for last week's polls after expressing discontent with the other big family reunion in Maharashtra political circles.
On paper the Congress, Sharad Pawar's NCP, and the Uddhav Thackeray Sena remain members of the Maha Vikas Aghadi, the alliance formed after the 2019 Assembly election.
Three relatively incident-free years followed but, beginning with Eknath Shinde's Sena rebellion in June 2022 and then Ajit Pawar's NCP split, the MVA has lurched from one crisis to another.
