How Ajit Pawar Plane Crash Sends Tremors Through Maharashtra Politics

The ruling Mahayuti in Maharashtra, battling disagreements and recovering from an acrimonious campaign for the local body polls, has been dealt its most devastating blow yet. 

Revived in 2022 after Eknath Shinde split the Shiv Sena, toppling the Uddhav Thackeray government, and took oath as chief minister, the coalition took its current form when Ajit Pawar followed in Shinde's footsteps, divided uncle Sharad Pawar's NCP, and joined the Maharashtra government a year later. 

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The arrangement worked smoothly with Shinde as chief minister and the BJP's Devendra Fadnavis and Pawar as his deputies until 2024, when a mega victory in the Assembly polls posed the first major challenge for the Mahayuti. The BJP emerged as the single largest party by a massive margin, winning 132 of the state's 288 seats, just 13 shy of a majority on its own. 

The Shinde Sena notched up 57 seats and Ajit Pawar's NCP 41, while the Uddhav Thackeray faction of the Sena could win only 20 seats, the highest among the opposition grouping. Shinde, arguing that the victory was a result of his governance and the schemes introduced under him, made a pitch to retain the chief minister's post. 

The BJP, however, was in no mood to relent, and a sulking Shinde settled for the deputy chief minister's post. This was at least in part because he was aware that the BJP and Pawar's NCP had the numbers to form a government on their own and did not really need him. For the BJP, then, Shinde and Pawar served as a valuable counterbalance to each other, preventing both from pushing too hard and demanding a larger share of the governance pie. 

Knives Out

Then came the local body polls and various permutations began to emerge, with the Mahayuti parties fighting each other in certain places. The most notable among them was the Shinde Sena and the BJP tying up to contest the elections for the Mumbai, Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad municipal corporations, leaving Pawar out in the cold. 

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This led to a twist in Maharashtra politics, and talks of a reunion in the Pawar family. The two Pawar factions decided to contest elections together for the Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad municipal corporations, which were once NCP strongholds. 

And then the knives came out, especially from Ajit Pawar's side. 

Referencing the BJP's oft-repeated allegations of his involvement in a Rs 70,000-crore irrigation scam before he joined hands with it, Pawar alleged that the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation, where the saffron party was in power between 2017 and 2022, had been riddled with corruption for nine years, leading to mounting debts. 

"Everybody knows that allegations of a Rs 70,000-crore irrigation scam were made against me. Today, I am in power alongside those who made those allegations. Can a person be labelled guilty even before it is proved?" Pawar asked.

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He then said the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation was infested by "gangs of looters" and hinted that the ruling dispensation in Maharashtra had an "arrogance of power", which was not present when the Congress and NCP ruled the state. 

While the BJP asked Pawar to introspect and warned of "difficulties" if he continued to make such allegations, Fadnavis was more direct. "Some people only find their voice once the election bell rings," the chief minister remarked, going on to say that the allies had agreed on friendly contests, but Ajit Pawar's restraint was "somewhat shaken".

The BJP won big in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad and emerged as the single largest party in the BMC, but needs Shinde's Shiv Sena backing to elect its own mayor, which emerged as another point of friction and is yet to be settled. 

It was in this backdrop that the plane carrying Ajit Pawar crashed in Baramati on Wednesday morning, depriving not just Maharashtra of a stalwart, but also the Mahayuti of a key figure and the BJP of a leader that could be used to neutralise Shinde's ambitions.

A big challenge for the BJP and Fadnavis will also be to ensure that the MLAs from the Ajit Pawar camp don't drift away to the NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar), strengthening the opposition ranks as well as Shinde's standing in the ruling coalition. One way of ensuring this could be by giving Ajit Pawar's deputy chief minister seat to someone else from the party, which is difficult in the absence of a clear number two. 

The NCP Factor

The other big question for Maharashtra's knotty politics will be what becomes of the two NCPs now that one of them has lost its uncontested head and unarguably most popular mass leader. The Ajit Pawar faction upstaged his 85-year-old uncle's grouping both in the Assembly polls and the municipal corporation elections, establishing his party as the real NCP.

Amid talk of an NCP reunion, it was expected that Ajit Pawar would lead from the front in Maharashtra, leaving Sharad Pawar's daughter and MP Supriya Sule, who is not seen as a mass leader, to handle things in Delhi. 

The tier two leadership in Ajit Pawar's NCP is seen to be Lok Sabha MP Sunil Tatkare and Rajya Sabha MPs Praful Patel and Pawar's wife Sunetra Pawar, who may now jostle for control. 

There is also Parth Pawar, Ajit's son, whose big political launch failed after he lost the Lok Sabha elections in 2019 by a big margin and also got embroiled in allegations of a land scam in Pune last year. 

The other options for the faction are two former ministers, who have mass appeal but are not seen by analysts to be frontrunners: Dhananjay Munde and Chhagan Bhujbal.

The jostling may get even more intense if the NCPs unite. Sharad Pawar may push for Sule to be the face, which may not be acceptable to Sunetra Pawar and others from the Ajit Pawar camp, leaving the party facing an existential crisis.