"Happy For Sunetra Pawar": Sharad Pawar On Ajit Pawar's Wife's Promotion

NCP leader Sharad Pawar expressed happiness over Sunetra Pawar – the wife of nephew Ajit Pawar, who died last week in a plane crash – replacing her husband as Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra. Sunetra Pawar, a Rajya Sabha MP from the state, was sworn in Saturday night.

However, Sharad Pawar denied any knowledge of a memorial for his nephew on the campus of Vidya Pratishtan, the educational institution founded by the Pawar family in Baramati.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday morning, the veteran politician also hit out at Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis for speaking on the possible merger of the two NCP factions, one led by Sharad Pawar and the other that was led by Ajit Pawar. The Sharad Pawar-founded Nationalist Congress Party split in 2023 after Ajit Pawar led a clutch of MLAs into an alliance with the BJP.

Sharad Pawar said merger talks were taking place between his nephew and a senior leader from his side, Jayant Patil, and had nothing to do with Fadnavis or the Bharatiya Janata Party.

"… Fadnavis was not involved in the talks. What right did he have to talk about it?" Pawar senior asked, before emphasising that his focus had now changed to helping his family through this tragic situation. "As of now, there is no discussion about any political decisions…" he said.

Sharad Pawar's snap followed Fadnavis rubbishing talk of a NCP merger, saying Ajit Pawar would have spoken to him and the BJP leadership if he wanted to go back.

“The NCP takes its own decisions but had such talks taken place, Ajit dada would surely have informed me about it. His party is in power with us as part of the Mahayuti (the ruling coalition that also includes Eknath Shinde's Shiv Sena faction),” Fadnavis said this week.

Sources told NDTV Sunetra Pawar had been pushed into the Deputy Chief Minister's chair to counter any talk of a merger. The narrative of that had been "manufactured", Fadnavis said.

Ajit Pawar, 66, died after his chartered Learjet crashed while trying to land at an airfield in Baramati, which is the family's political stronghold. After his death, it emerged he had been planning a family reunion, i.e., reuniting the divided NCP factions as a 'gift' to his uncle.

The two factions had already joined hands for municipal elections last month, although that ended in failure after the BJP, which had sidelined Ajit Pawar in seat-sharing, swept to victory.

Nevertheless, sources told NDTV last week the reunion was still on and that it would be announced in the second week of February. Sunetra Pawar's role was seen as 'crucial'.

Meanwhile, Sharad Pawar also spoke about the ruckus in Parliament involving Congress MP Rahul Gandhi and his attempts to read into record excerpts from an unpublished book by ex-Army chief General MM Naravane.

The excerpts have to do with the India-China border row in Ladakh in June 2020.

Gandhi's move, however, was countered by the ruling BJP, which said it violated House protocol to read unpublished material, a rebuttal the Congress leader answered by personally affirming its authenticity, as required by House rules. Nevertheless protests against his reading of the excerpts in Parliament continued and eight MPs were suspended in the chaos yesterday.

"Rahul Gandhi, as Leader of the Opposition, should have been allowed to speak… there should have been an opportunity to discuss Naravane's book. The fact that it was written by the (ex-) Army Chief indicates a situation of concern, and therefore it should have been discussed…"