Who is Ajit Pawar? All you need to know about NCP leader's political journey

Ajit Pawar. Pic/PTI

A day after Ajit Pawar led a rebellion in the Nationalist Congress Party and joined the Maharashtra ruling coalition, the NCP vs NCP battle is underway at full steam. The history of Maharashtra politics repeated itself after three years on Sunday when Ajit Pawar took an oath as the deputy chief minister again.

After a brief stint as Maharashtra's deputy chief minister in 2019 under a BJP government, NCP leader Ajit Pawar is back to the post by splitting the party, in a stunning turn of events in the state politics.

On Sunday, Ajit Pawar went in for action replay but this time with the support of over 40 of the NCP's 53 MLAs. He chose to split the party even as his uncle, NCP supremo Sharad Pawar, was busy getting all opposition parties together to take on the BJP.

Ajit Pawar took an oath as the deputy chief minister of Maharashtra on July 2 for the third time since 2019, capping months of intense speculation about his next political move.

Here are NCP leader Ajit Pawar's political journey in 10 points:

1. Ajit Pawar, who is the son of Sharad Pawar's elder brother Anantrao, is known to be politically ambitious and speaks his mind.

2. Pawar, who was also the deputy CM in the previous Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government, which was in power from November 2019 to June 2022, enjoys the image of a grassroots leader and an able administrator.

3. The politician made his foray into politics in 1982 as member on the board of a cooperative sugar factory. He was elected as chairman of the Pune District Cooperative Bank in 1991 and remained on the post for many years.

4. After Pawar became the chairman of Pune District Cooperative Bank in 1991, he held the post for the next 16 years. Elected as an MP to the Lok Sabha from Baramati in 1991, Pawar later vacated the seat for Sharad Pawar who was the defence minister in the PV Narasimha Rao government. He later went on to become a Member of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly (MLA) from the Baramati Assembly Constituency.

5. He was elected as MLA from the Baramati Assembly Constituency in 1995, 1999, 2004, 2009, 2014, and in 2019 after winning by a vote margin of 1,65,265 votes.

6. Ajit Pawar was elevated to the Cabinet minister rank in Maharashtra at the age of 40 in 1999 after having served as a junior minister for over nine years. He has taken charge of some heavyweight ministries such as Irrigation, rural development, water resources, and finance that helped him spread his clout throughout the state, including his own pocket borough of west Maharashtra.

7. In November 2019, Ajit Pawar was sworn in as the deputy CM for the shortest term with the government led by BJP's Devendra Fadnavis, which took oath in a hush-hush ceremony in the Raj Bhawan, lasted just 80 hours.

8. He again became the deputy chief minister in the MVA government led by Uddhav Thackeray and remained in the position for two-and-half years, till the alliance government collapsed in June last year.

9. Earlier, Pawar also served as deputy CM during the 15-year tenure of Congress-NCP government under Ashok Chavan and Prithviraj Chavan.

10. He was elected as an MP from Baramati in 1991, but vacated the post for uncle Sharad Pawar, who became the defence minister in the Narasimha Rao government. Later, Ajit Pawar was elected as MLA from Baramati and went on to represent the constituency for six terms.

10. In 2014, Devendra Fadnavis who was in the opposition, highlighted Ajit Pawar's alleged involvement in the Rs 70,000 crore irrigation scam. It was during Ajit Pawar's tenure as water resources minister that allegation of irregularities surfaced in irrigation projects in the state.