Ajit: Sidelined in party, Ajit Pawar’s gameplan to take on uncle Sharad was in

Ajit (63) took oath at Raj Bhavan along with eight other NCP legislators. Among them were the party’s heavyweights and party founder and president Sharad Pawar’s long-time aides like Dilip Walse Patil, Chhagan Bhujbal, Dhananjay Munde and Hasan Mushrif.By Ajit’s side in this second rebellion of his – after his first one in November 2019 that fizzled out in just a couple of days – was Praful Patel, one of Pawar Senior’s oldest and closest associates who was recently anointed as NCP working president along with Pawar’s daughter Supriya Sule.
Ajit submitted a list of 40 supporting NCP MLAs to governor Ramesh Bais. NCP has 54 MLAs in all in the assembly. Ajit is soon likely to move the EC to get the party’s name and symbol, sources said.

Ajit’s gameplan in the works for a year
Ajit Pawar has followed the Eknath Shinde pattern, claiming he represents NCP and has the support of “everyone” from the party, though his uncle, Sharad Pawar, termed his act as “robbery” instead of rebellion and vowed to fight back.
Ajit’s disaffection at being sidelined in the party had not been a secret, but things came to a head in the past couple of months with Sharad Pawar first tendering his surprise resignation as party president in the first week of May, apparently to quell the intra-party rebellion that was brewing with Ajit at its helm, and later, after withdrawing his resignation, making Sule the working president and thus handing out a fresh snub to Ajit.

Ajit had been drafting a strategy to take on his uncle and cousin Supriya for a year, sources said. In fact, when Sharad Pawar announced his resignation at the Y B Chavan Centre in Mumbai, Ajit was the only NCP leader to state unequivocally, at a time other party leaders were imploring Sharad Pawar not to quit, that the resignation should be accepted to pave the way for a new leadership.
Last month, on the occasion of the party’s anniversary, Ajit asked Sharad Pawar to relieve him of the post of leader of opposition in the assembly and to give him an organisational task instead. In the same speech, he launched an oblique attack against the NCP’s leadership over the party’s failure to form a government on its own in Maharashtra.

Ajit had then pointed out that politicians who had emerged in the past two decades had made tremendous political progress while NCP had lagged behind. He cited the examples of Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, Telangana CM K Chandrashekhar Rao and Andhra Pradesh CM Jagan Mohan Reddy to underline his point, saying that Mamata had retained power though PM Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah had campaigned against her and Kejriwal had won a second successive term despite being a relatively new entrant in politics.
Further, targeting Jayant Patil who has held the post of NCP’s state unit president for over five years, he had said, “We have a tall leader like Sharad Pawar, but despite that we were not able to form government. It calls for self-introspection and corrective steps. It is high time the entire organisation is revamped as top priority.”

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