All in the Family

In Maharashtra’s politics where ideology is negotiable and arithmetic reigns supreme, the Pawars are playing the long game.

It would be fair to say that politics in Maharashtra has long ceased to be a contest of ideas. It is akin to a revolving door, where yesterday’s adversaries share breakfast today and plot against one another by dinner. Alliances are stitched together with remarkable speed and unravelled just as quickly, leaving voters struggling to keep track of who stands where or why. If this fluidity has a single emblem, it is the Pawar clan.

For decades Sharad Pawar has been cast as the state’s supreme tactician, a politician who treats ideology as a suggestion rather than a constraint. After 2014, as national politics hardened into a bipolar contest, Maharashtra went in the opposite direction. The familiar categories of friend and foe dissolved. The Congress embraced its ideological foe -the Shiv Sena; the Sena split in two; the Nationalist Congress Party fractured along family lines. What once appeared unthinkable became routine.

Volatile Politics

The 2019 Assembly Election marked the high point of this volatility. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the undivided Shiv Sena, which had fought together, fell out spectacularly after the results. In the chaos that followed, Pawar executed what many still regard as his finest manoeuvre: midwifing the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) - an improbable coalition of the Sena, Congress and NCP. Uddhav Thackeray, a man whose party had spent decades railing against Congress, was installed as Chief Minister. Devendra Fadnavis, the BJP’s rising star, was left stunned.

For two and a half years, Fadnavis appeared to brood on this reversal. Then came his riposte. In 2022 he engineered a split in the Shiv Sena, peeling away Eknath Shinde and a majority of its legislators. Shinde became CM while Fadnavis accepted the post of deputy, though few doubted where real power lay. The counter-stroke was devastating. The MVA collapsed, and in the 2024 assembly election the BJP-led Mahayuti returned with a handsome mandate.

The coup de grâce, at least symbolically, was delivered when Ajit Pawar - Sharad Pawar’s mercurial nephew and long-time heir apparent - crossed over with a chunk of the NCP to join the Mahayuti. It weakened the elder Pawar’s party, stabilised the new government and suggested that even Maharashtra’s most seasoned operator could be wrong-footed. For perhaps the first time in decades, Sharad Pawar looked momentarily unsettled.

Long Duel

Yet to assume that this is a simple story of one strategist outplaying another is to misunderstand Maharashtra’s politics. Many observers argue that Pawar and Fadnavis are engaged in a more subtle, long-term game in which both benefit from the steady erosion of the Shiv Sena, in both its Uddhav Thackeray and Eknath Shinde incarnations. In this telling, urban bodies, cooperatives and financial networks are the real prizes.

It is against this backdrop that the recent decision by the two NCP factions to come together for municipal corporation elections in select cities has caused such a stir. Images of Sharad Pawar and Ajit Pawar sharing a stage again have been read breathlessly as a family reunion. But it is nothing of the sort. This is a coldly calculated tactical arrangement.

Municipal corporations in Maharashtra are not minor prizes. They control budgets that run into thousands of crores and anchor grassroots patronage networks. Winning cities means shaping the political weather long before assembly or parliamentary polls. For Sharad Pawar, cooperating with his nephew at the local level helps prevent Congress and the Uddhav Thackeray-led Sena from entrenching themselves in urban power centres. For Ajit Pawar, it offers a chance to rebuild local legitimacy without surrendering the advantages of office.

Nor would it be the first time Pawar has used tactical alignments to ‘correct’ equations. He has never been squeamish about issue-based understandings with ideological rivals if the arithmetic demands it. The municipal pact is less about healing a family rift than about retaining bargaining power in an increasingly polarised landscape.

Personal relationships add another layer. Pawar’s easy camaraderie with Gautam Adani, India’s most controversial tycoon, has long irritated his allies. When Adani made a conspicuous appearance at Pawar’s birthday celebrations in Delhi that was attended awkwardly by Rahul Gandhi, it sent a message that the wily NCP patriarch does not subscribe to the Congress’s absolutist rhetoric against big business. Days later, Adani’s visit to Baramati, the Pawar family bastion, reinforced the point. The entire clan turned out to welcome him.

Was this a warning to Congress and the Sena, both of which have built political capital attacking Adani? Or merely a reminder that, in Pawar’s worldview, pragmatism trumps posture?

There is also the question of succession. Is the municipal rapprochement a prelude to a fuller reconciliation, with Sharad Pawar eventually handing the reins to his nephew?

The debate has sharpened amid murmurs about Supriya Sule, Pawar’s daughter and MP, whose critics question her ability to command the party organisation in Maharashtra. While Sule remains influential in Delhi, her grip on the state apparatus is less secure.

For Sharad Pawar, the coming urban elections serve multiple ends. They help protect his legacy, keep rivals guessing and ensure that the NCP - split though it may be - remains relevant. For Ajit Pawar, they offer a chance to step out from his uncle’s shadow while still benefiting from his tacit endorsement.

None of this amounts to reconciliation in the sentimental sense. It is politics in its purest, most transactional form. In Maharashtra, permanence is an illusion. Alliances dissolve overnight and rivals rediscover each other by morning. And the Pawars understand this better than most.

(The writer is a political observer. Views personal.)