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Mumbai: In a surprise turn in state politics, after a brief stint as the Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra in 2019 under the BJP government, NCP leader Ajit Pawar has returned to the post after a split in the party. Pawar, who was also the deputy CM in the previous Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government, which was in power from November 2019 to June 2022, has an image of a grassroots leader and an able administrator, known to Are. Be politically ambitious.
The 63-year-old leader, who is known to be politically ambitious and speaks his mind, took oath as Maharashtra’s deputy CM on Sunday for the third time since 2019, ending months of speculation about his next political move. Intense speculation ended.
Ajit Pawar, who is the son of the late Anant Pawar, the elder brother of NCP chief Sharad Pawar, recently appealed to the party leadership to relieve him of the responsibility of Leader of the Opposition in the Maharashtra Assembly and be assigned a role in the party organization .
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Ajit Pawar created history in 2019 Maharashtra assembly elections
In the 2019 assembly elections, Ajit Pawar was re-elected from the Baramati assembly constituency with the highest margin of over 1.65 lakh votes in the state.
In November 2019, Ajit Pawar was sworn in as Deputy CM for the shortest period as the BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis-led government, which took oath in a hush-hush ceremony at the Raj Bhavan, lasted only 80 hours.
He again became the deputy chief minister in the Thackeray-led MVA government and held the position for two-and-a-half years, until the fall of the coalition government in June last year.
Earlier, Ajit Pawar also served as the Deputy CM during the 15-year tenure of the Congress-NCP government led by Ashok Chavan and Prithviraj Chavan.
Apart from holding the Finance portfolio in the Congress-NCP and MVA governments, Ajit Pawar has also held the Water Resources and Power portfolios.
Ajit Pawar entered politics in 1982
Ajit Pawar entered politics in 1982 as a member on the board of a cooperative sugar factory. He was elected as the chairman of the Pune District Co-operative Bank in 1991 and held the position for many years.
He was elected MP from Baramati in 1991, but vacated the post for uncle Sharad Pawar, who became Defense Minister in the Narasimha Rao government. Later, Ajit Pawar was elected MLA from Baramati and represented the constituency six times.
He first became Minister of State for Agriculture and Power in the Sudharkarrao Naik government and later became a cabinet minister in 1999.
Ajit Pawar’s involvement in Rs 70,000 crore irrigation scam
Ajit Pawar’s close associates and family members are facing probe by the Enforcement Directorate and the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) in their sugar cooperative units.
In 2014, Devendra Fadnavis, who was in the opposition, highlighted Ajit Pawar’s alleged involvement in a Rs 70,000 crore irrigation scam. Allegations of irregularities in irrigation projects in the state surfaced during Ajit Pawar’s tenure as water resources minister.
In May this year, Ajit Pawar visited Delhi to meet the BJP leadership, before Sharad Pawar announced his decision to quit as party chief and later take it back.
According to sources, Supriya Sule’s promotion in the party hastened Ajit Pawar’s decision to join the ruling BJP-Shiv Sena alliance.
Ajit Pawar’s latest defiance of his uncle has raised questions over the future of the NCP, which recently celebrated 24 years of its existence.
Recently, a war of words broke out between Maharashtra’s Deputy CM Fadnavis and Sharad Pawar.
Sharad Pawar spoke of throwing a “googly” at Fadnavis over the 2019 silent swearing-in ceremony. But now, with the split in NCP, Fadnavis has delivered a ‘yorker’.
