Fox in the henhouse: How Ajit Pawar cut the ground under NCP's feet

After the Maharashtra Assembly election results and the Shiv Sena’s rebellion against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), it became clear that no party was going to be able to form a government alone; parties acted post haste to corral their flock. The Congress lodged its MLAs in the luxury Buena Vista resort in Jaipur (reportedly the average daily tariff of villas done up in the ‘French and Rajasthani style’, with private swimming pools, was Rs 36,000). The Sena sequestered its MLAs at Hotel Rangsharda in a Mumbai suburb. The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), however, did nothing, assuming that after he had been promised deputy chief ministership, Ajit Pawar would ensure party MLAs stayed “disciplined”.

How wrong they were. The fox was already in the henhouse!

The son of Sharad Pawar’s elder brother, who used to work at V Shantaram’s Rajkamal Studios, Ajit started his political career in 1982 when he was in his early 20s. For a member of the family that dominated sugar cooperatives, his first step in politics was his election to a cooperative. As rural cooperative banks are an essential part of Maharashtra politics, the next step was to become chairman of Pune District Co-operative Bank in 1991. He contested and won the Baramati Lok Sabha constituency in 1991 but vacated the seat for his uncle Sharad Pawar, who had become defence minister in the government led by P V Narasimha Rao.

As compensation, he was given a seat to contest in the Assembly elections that followed and became minister of state for agriculture and power (from November 1992 to February 1993). He was re-elected from the constituency in 1995, 1999, 2004, 2009, and 2014 and assigned various roles — of minister of state for agriculture, horticulture and power, minister of water resources and deputy chief minister (September 29, 2012-September 25, 2014).

Controversies have always dogged him. In September 2012, he resigned following allegations of an irrigation scam of Rs 20,000 crore during his tenure as water resources minister between 1999 and 2009. But he returned to government as deputy chief minister after the government issued (or was forced to issue) a white paper.

In September, just ahead of the Maharashtra elections this year, alarm bells went off as Ajit resigned as MLA, supposedly upset that his uncle had been named (along with him) in the Maharashtra state cooperative bank scam by the BJP. Sharad Pawar was expecting to be summoned by the Enforcement Directorate. Exactly how his nephew’s action served a political purpose was unclear to most, even at that time. Relief in that case the BJP might have offered to him as a package deal in return for his support is the current speculation.

Because Sharad Pawar had largely left the management of the state party to his nephew, it is possible that Ajit created an empire that he thought was more loyal to him than his uncle. Sharad Pawar could not have been unaware of this. But this time, Ajit may have gone too far. As he would have been deputy chief minister even in the Sena-led dispensation, it is possible that pressure and promises of legal indemnity against corruption might have led him to cross the floor. Now it has to be determined who has real control over the NCP — and who has nominal control.

Meet the Pawars