Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Sunetra Pawar who was sworn in on Saturday evening is a 62-year-old politician who happens to be the late Ajit Pawar’s wife. She is the mother of two sons, namely Parth Pawar and Jay Pawar, who runs a business.
Sunetra Pawar was born in 1963 to Bajirao Patil, who was a political leader from Maharashtra’s Darashiv. She graduated in commerce from Saraswati Bhuvan College in Sambhajinagar, in 1983. Former Maharashtra Minister Padamsinh Patil happens to be her brother.
Sunetra got married to Ajit Pawar in 1985 at the initiative of her brother Padamsinh Patil. In the initial years after her marriage to Ajit Pawar, she stayed away from politics but never too distant from it either.
She first came into limelight after she took the initiative to construct public toilets in Katewadi village as part of a social work scheme. As a result of her efforts in 2006, Katewadi village near Baramati was honoured with the Nirmal Gram Puraskar and officially declared as a village free from open defecation.
In 2008, she became known for establishing the Baramati Hi Tech Textile Park and running it as its chairperson. She also happens to be one of the trustees of Vidya Pratishthan, which is a Baramati-based organization run by Sharad Pawar’s family.
Sunetra Pawar was also a member of a French think tank called the ‘World Entrepreneurship Forum’ since 2011. She has been a member of the Senate of Savitribai Phule Pune University since 2017.
However, her participation in active politics began only in July 2, 2023 after the split of the undivided Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) founded by Sharad Pawar in 2003, after her late husband Ajit Pawar and several senior NCP leaders broke away to form a separate NCP and joined the ruling BJP–Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena alliance in Maharashtra.
Sunetra Pawar stood for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections from Baramati as the Ajit Pawar-led NCP candidate, only to be defeated by Sharad Pawar-led NCP leader Supriya Sule who represents Baramati today. Sunetra Pawar is known to be close to Supriya Sule despite the latter defeating her from Baramati.
After she was defeated by Supriya Sule in the Baramati Lok Sabha constituency, Sunetra Pawar was elected to the Rajya Sabha on June 18, 2024.
For the Ajit Pawar-led NCP, it is now a battle for survival, where its MLAs and cadres will not find any other face acceptable as a leadership option due to the political inexperience of elder son Parth Pawar and his younger brother Jay Pawar.
Sunetra Pawar inherits the party at a time when tremendous public pressure is being built by a section within the Ajit-Pawar NCP and the Sharad Pawar-led NCP’s leadership for a merger of both the NCPs at the earliest.
She has also inherited the Ajit Pawar-led NCP at a time when another section with close ties to the BJP is opposed to any merger of the two NCPs, under Sharad Pawar’s leadership.
Sunetra Pawar will also have to deal with experienced and seasoned political satraps within the Ajit Pawar-led NCP like Praful Patel, Chhagan Bhujbal and Sunil Tatkare who call the shots.