The death of Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar in a plane crash on Wednesday has sparked off intense political speculation, both within and outside the Ajit Pawar-led NCP.
NCP sources said that only a day before the tragic air crash cut short Ajit Pawar’s life, the politically influential Sharad Pawar family had reached a consensus to anoint Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar as the “supreme leader” of both the NCPs, with the blessings of his 85-year-old uncle, Sharad Pawar.
The tragedy struck when final touches were about to be given to this transition, and Ajit Pawar left for Baramati to address a zilla parishad election campaign early Wednesday morning, NCP sources said.
Sources said that it would be difficult to predict the course of political developments, especially after Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis met the late Ajit Pawar’s wife, Sunetra Pawar, who is an NCP Rajya Sabha MP.
“Nobody knows whether Ajit Pawar’s plans will be implemented as part of political continuity or if Supriya Sule, who is Sharad Pawar-led NCP’s Lok Sabha MP, has other plans or whether she will work out some understanding with Sunetra Pawar, who is Ajit Pawar-led NCP’s Rajya Sabha MP. We don’t know what the equations will be after Fadnavis had a meeting with Sunetra Pawar,” according to an Ajit Pawar-led NCP source.
Incidentally, NCP founder Sharad Pawar himself was deliberately informed of the tragic incident quite late, only after everybody else knew about it, because he was at Mumbai’s Breach Candy Hospital in South Mumbai, according to NCP sources.
“Sharad Pawar was admitted to Breach Candy Hospital. So nobody told him about the tragic incident since everybody feared whether Saheb would be able to bear the shock. It was done out of concern. Now, Sharad Pawar has come back to his Silver Oak residence. Prime Minister Narendra Modi called him, and he left for Baramati in the afternoon,” according to the NCP source.
However, the late Ajit Pawar’s mother, living in Baramati, learned about the tragic incident almost as soon as it happened. According to Sampat Dhaygude, the manager of the Baramati-based farmhouse where the late Ajit Pawar’s mother Ashatai Pawar lives, “Ajit Pawar’s mother, Ashatai Pawar, was watching TV when news of Ajit Pawar’s accident appeared on TV, after which Ashatai immediately asked us and asked if (Ajit Pawar) ‘Dada’ had an accident. She assumed that ‘Dada’ might have received only a few bruises. She did not expect it to be something so tragic.”
“As soon as the TV news channels showed that Dada’s body was brought to the hospital in Baramati, we immediately cut off the TV cable so that our mother, Ashatai, would not get to know what really happened. We told her that the TV had gone off and also put her mobile phone on flight mode. We told her that nothing had happened. But Ashatai left the farmhouse on foot, saying that she wanted to meet Dada, after her driver lied to her that something was wrong with the car. But others informed her about what happened later,” Dhaygude said.