Mumbai: Declaring an eight-day deadline to clear alleged encroachments, Rajya Sabha BJP MP Medha Kulkarni has issued a strong call for karseva to restore the dignity of a historic Pandav-era stepwell (locally known as a Barav) in Manchar, located in the Ambegaon tehsil of Pune district. The ultimatum follows a tense standoff and a physical altercation on Friday between the MP and Pune Rural Police personnel, who intervened to stop Hindu activists from marking the disputed sit

Maharashtra’s Rajya Sabha nominations reveal the BJP’s adroit caste arithmetic. Maharashtra's politics has always been a delicate exercise in caste arithmetic. Few strategies illustrate this better than the art of 'social engineering' or the deliberate weaving together of caste and community alliances to produce electoral success. In recent years, that craft appeared to have faded from prominence. Yet the latest Rajya Sabha nominations from Maharashtra suggest that it has ret

Mumbai: Corridors of power in Maharashtra are witnessing a growing sense of unease. Stern and quick disciplinary actions against senior bureaucrats are rare in state administration. The recent suspension of a senior IAS officer for failing to brief a minister during an ongoing assembly session has sent shockwaves through the bureaucracy. It has also laid bare the intense power struggle between ruling alliance partners, the BJP and the Shiv Sena. The controversy erupted when p

Preliminary probe report says the visibility at Baramati airport was only 2000 meter against the minimum requirement of 5000 meter Mumbai: Pointing to a stunning violation of norms, the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) has said that visibility at Baramati airport was only 2000 meter when the ill-fated Learjet 45XR plane carrying Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar crashed on January 28. The stipulated visibility rules are minimum 5000 meter for visual landings that

Mumbai: Days after taking oath as Maharashtra’s first woman Deputy CM, Sunetra Ajit Pawar was unanimously elected president of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). This was another major responsibility on her shoulders just a month after her husband’s tragic death in the Baramati air crash. For decades, Sunetra, popular as ‘Vahini’ or just ‘Tai’, chose to be the silent force behind her husband. But she remained accessible, grounded and attentive to the people of Baramati. Su

Amid the din of Maharashtra’s politics, the loudest beneficiary may well be the BJP, its quietest player. Maharashtra’s politics has rarely been short of drama. Yet the current season feels particularly cacophonous. As leaders dart between Delhi and Mumbai and television studios throb with indignation, each day yields a fresh provocation.  And yet, for all the noise, there is a curious absence of weight. Beneath the surface tumult, there is little sign of a sustained ideologi

Mumbai | Pune : Baramati Taluka Police on Thursday refused NCP (SP) MLA Rohit Pawar’s demand to file an FIR over the plane crash that killed former Deputy CM Ajit Pawar in January. Rohit Pawar was accompanied by his cousin Yugendra Pawar and their supporters as they approached Baramati Police. Even after one-and-a-half hours of heated discussion, police officials did not agree to file an FIR but only accepted a written complaint. Rohit Pawar had a similar experience at Marine

Mumbai: In a high-octane showdown on Wednesday, Mumbai Police refused NCP (SP) MLA Rohit Pawar’s demand to lodge an FIR against the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and VSR Ventures Pvt Ltd (VSRVPL) over the January 28 Baramati plane crash that killed former deputy CM Ajit Pawar. Rohit Pawar went to Marine Drive police station with party MLC Amol Mitkari and others to file the complaint. What followed was a full-fledged confrontation, as the police officers refuse

By folding populist habits into a harder budgetary logic, India’s railways are discovering that reform is less about new trains than about financial realism. For decades after independence, the Railway Budget, presented separately from the Union Budget, became a theatrical exercise in political generosity, packed with announcements of new trains and pet projects designed to flatter local constituencies. The result was a sprawling system admired for its engineering prowess but

CM Devendra Fadnavis' customary tea party on the eve of Assembly Session. | Pic: DGIPR Mumbai: The facade of unity within the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) has suffered a significant blow on the eve of the Maharashtra Legislature’s budget session. What was meant to be a show of strength against the Mahayuti government has instead exposed deep-seated mistrust and conflicting ambitions, primarily centered around the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections. The cracks were most visible during

Mumbai : Nationalist Congress Party (SP) MLA Rohit R. Pawar alleged that the VSR Ventures Pvt. Ltd. had high political and business connections, some linked with state governments or aligned with the ruling party at the centre who were attempting to divert the probe into the Jan. 28 Baramati air-crash ostensibly to protect the company. In another hard-hitting media-presentation, Rohit Pawar spoke of a “high-level political and commercial conspiracy” behind the air tragedy tha

In the State that once prized stable alliances, power now changes hands faster than loyalties can be explained. Maharashtra was once celebrated for its political geometry. Alliances were durable and the rivalries intelligible while ideological battle-lines, though often blurred, were nonetheless broadly recognisable. Since 2019, that architecture has collapsed. What has replaced it is not a new order but a condition of permanent uncertainty. The state’s politics today mutates

Mumbai : The Directorate General of Civil Aviation has commenced a Special Audit of VSR Ventures Pvt Ltd – which owned the ill-fate Learjet 45 aircraft that crashed in Baramati on Jan. 28, killing Deputy Chief Minister Ajit A. Pawar and others.   The Special Audit, ordered by the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) started on Feb. 4, and is likely to be completed shortly. The DGCA said it would release the Preliminary Report of the air-crash within 30 days of the occurrence (by

Says aircraft owners being ‘shielded’ Mumbai : In more no-holds-barred revelations, Nationalist Congress Party (SP) MLA Rohit Pawar claimed that efforts were on to ‘save’ the VSR Ventures Pvt Ltd company officials after the January 28 Baramati air-crash. He demanded the removal of Minister of Civil Aviation K. Rammohna Naidu till the investigations into the Learjet 45 aircraft are completed. Making a second presentation in a week, Rohit Pawar brought up issues pertaining to i

Mumbai : The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) said on Tuesday (February 17) that it was seeking ‘specialised support’ for retrieval of crucial data from the black box of Learjet 45 aircraft that crashed in Baramati on January 28 killing Deputy CM of Maharashtra Ajit Pawar and four others onboard. The bureau, along with Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), is facing flak for delay in releasing even the preliminary report on the crash.   In a detailed stat

Mumbai: In a significant escalation of the ongoing friction within Maharashtra’s political landscape, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) state unit chief Sunil Tatkare has squarely blamed the Congress party for the disintegration of the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance. In a candid interview with a Marathi television news channel, Tatkare asserted that the Congress was the first to "ditch" its partners, a move he claims fundamentally broke the trust required to sustain t

A retired general’s unpublished memoir has succeeded in briefly forcing India’s lawmakers to argue with ideas rather than one another. I love following Indian politics from close quarters, however dirty, self-seeking and theatrical it may be. Yet I am drawn less to its daily intrigue than to the aroma of books and the knowledge-filled contents they carry. Between beautiful books and pitiable politics, books win hands down. Consider, for a moment, the power of the written word

State BJP without official body since over 8 months Mumbai: Despite a crushing wave of victories across Maharashtra’s urban and rural landscape, the state unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) finds itself in a peculiar state of organizational paralysis. More than eight months after Ravindra Chavan officially took the reins as State President from Chandrashekhar Bawankule in July 2025, the party has failed to constitute its state executive body, exposing deep-seated intern

Mumbai: Just as the dust seemed to be settling on the failed attempts to merge the two factions of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), a fresh controversy has erupted, reigniting the political drama. In a startling revelation, NCP (SP) State President Shashikant Shinde has claimed that a secret deal had already been finalized to hand over the entire command of a unified party to the late Ajit Pawar—an announcement that was reportedly scheduled for February 12. Shinde’s com

The BJP’s sweep of Maharashtra’s local bodies suggests that power is no longer flowing only from Mumbai, but rising quietly from the countryside. Maharashtra’s recent Zilla Parishad and Panchayat Samiti elections, usually treated as political sideshows, deserve a closer look. They may yet prove more revealing than last year’s Assembly contest. For while state elections measure momentum, local-body polls test something more durable: whether a party’s claims of grassroots stren