The untimely death of Maharashtra deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar, in a plane crash, has shocked the state and the nation.
Ajit Dada, as he was affectionately known, was travelling to Baramati, his constituency and hometown, to address four public rallies during the day as part of the zilla parishad elections campaign.
He left Mumbai at 8 in the morning and boarded a Learjet 45 aircraft, which crashed while landing at Baramati airport and then exploded, resulting in a fireball that killed all six persons on board the flight. The pilot had complained of very poor visibility at the time of landing, it is learnt.
Born on July 22, 1959, in the village Deolali Pravara in Rahuri Taluka of Ahilya Nagar (then Ahmed Nagar) district, Ajit was the son of Anantrao Pawar. His father had tried his luck in Mumbai’s film industry but returned to Pune as his career did not take off.
Ajit grew up at his maternal grandparents' house in Deolali Pravara. When he was eight years old, in 1967, his uncle Sharad Pawar got elected to the state legislative assembly from Baramati on a Congress ticket. Sharad Pawar was the first congressman in a family that had its ideological leaning towards the Peasants and Workers Party, which had a strong presence in Maharashtra back then.
Right from childhood, Ajit closely followed his uncle and drew inspiration from him. Uncle Sharad Pawar too groomed his nephew in order to get him into politics.
Ajit first contested assembly elections in 1991 from Baramati. He won with a big margin, and since then, he had been representing the constituency with an increasing margin every time. He was one of those leaders who would get elected with the biggest margins in state assembly elections.
Ajit Pawar was a no-nonsense and blunt-talking politician. He did not like Chamchas or hangers-on, which is a trademark of a politician in India. He was hugely popular among the people and party cadre, be it when he was in Congress, or in the United NCP or in the NCP that he split more than three years ago in order to join the NDA alliance.
Ajit was seen as Sharad Pawar’s political heir till the time Pawar senior’s daughter Supriya entered politics in 2008. Slowly, after Supriya’s entry into politics, the differences between the uncle and nephew started coming to the fore, said people in the know.
Ajit became a minister in his very first term in the assembly. Thanks to his uncle’s influence, he began getting more and more important portfolios, first as MoS and then as a cabinet minister. He became deputy chief minister in 2010 and, since then, has been the deputy chief minister of Maharashtra five times.
Ajit’s tenure as irrigation minister would go on to become controversial as he faced allegations of the irrigation scam and the Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank scam. It was Devendra Fadnavis, who was then the state BJP president, who had launched a fiery attack on Ajit Pawar. The politics would later take such twists and turns that Ajit Pawar became Fadnavis’s deputy chief minister in 2019, first and then in 2024.
Ajit was a pragmatic politician who believed that there was no point in being in opposition. He was among the first NCP men who openly took a stand that NCP should ally with the BJP and be part of the NDA after Narendra Modi became the prime minister and the BJP came to power in Maharashtra too.
His colleague and senior NCP leader Dilip Walse Patil called him Mr Perfectionist. Another colleague and former NCP state president, Jayant Patil, had said Ajit Dada is so conscious of timeliness that one can set their watches as per his schedule.
An early riser, Ajit Pawar always began working at 6 in the morning. In fact, this writer has personally experienced his timeliness and early morning working style. An interview given to this writer was scheduled at 6.30 in the morning, and it began at the same time.
Reacting to Ajit Pawar’s demise, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said that it was a great personal loss to him as Ajit Dada was his close friend who was very generous at heart.
Ajit Pawar is survived by his wife Sunetra, who is a Rajya Sabha MP, and his sons Parth and Jay.
It would be interesting to see what happens to the Ajit Pawar-led NCP after his demise. Already, there are talks of a reunion of both factions of the NCP. The death of Ajit Pawar is likely to speed up the process, as both factions had already fought Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad municipal corporation elections together. His death also means that Supriya Sule will now be the topmost NCP leader after her father in the party heirarchy and the two factions might merge. What remains to be seen is whether the party remains with the India alliance or gravitates towards BJP led NDA.