Maharashtra’s politics has long excelled at the peculiar art of disguising power politics as moral philosophy. No leader mastered that craft more deftly than NCP (SP) chief Sharad Pawar. Beneath this carefully lacquered image has lain an older and cruder reality of caste consolidation masquerading as reformism. The latest controversy involving NCP (SP) spokesperson Vikas Lawande and sections of the Warkari community reveals the contradiction with unusual clarity. Lawande had

In Maharashtra’s long and complicated history of politics, very few stories are as fascinating or as layered as the silent but very real tug-of-war happening inside the Pawar family. On one side stands the patriarch, 85-year-old Sharad Pawar, one of India’s sharp political minds who has been Chief Minister of Maharashtra four times. On the other stands Parth Pawar, his grandnephew and son of the deceased Ajit Pawar, who has just been sworn in as a Rajya Sabha MP. While Sharad

Inside the ruthless succession war for the soul of the NCP Mumbai: In a significant revelation that sheds light on the internal fractures of Maharashtra’s most prominent political dynasty, a senior Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader has disclosed that a merger between the two rival factions was nearly finalised following the tragic death of Ajit Pawar, only to be derailed by a bitter battle for leadership. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the leader revealed that