While Ajit Pawar will fight the BJP in Pimpri-Chinchwad and Pune, he will continue to share power with the saffron party in the Maha govt

As 2025 comes to an end and 2026 is round the corner, it’s time to take stock of what all happened in the past year. One big highlight of the year was that Maharashtra witnessed highly dramatic and unpredictable events, which may be recorded as historic in any political analyst’s book. Less than a week after the Thackeray cousins announced their “Reunion and Alliance” for the upcoming civic polls in the state, the NCP founder, Sharad Pawar, and nephew, Ajit Pawar, made it clear that they too will fight the Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad municipal polls together. This shows how shifting loyalties and political opportunism have been the flavour of the season this past year among Maharashtra’s politicians!

Just about a week ago, in this very column, the FPJ predicted that the Pawar uncle and nephew duo were planning to form an alliance, meaning that the two Nationalist Congress Party fractions, which fought the Lok Sabha assembly as well as the city council polls against each other, will now be a united force in their political bastion of Pune district. The biggest casualty of all this is, obviously, the grassroots-level activists of both factions of the NCP, who have to suddenly follow the instructions from the top and change their house-to-house campaign plans. They will find it difficult to answer the voters as to why they are canvassing for the same people they campaigned against in the last election.

It is clear that the Pawars are acting out of compulsion, and the BJP seems to be calling the shots and is in a commanding position when it comes to dominating the strategy for the upcoming polls in Mumbai, Pune, and other municipalities in Maharashtra. The BJP leadership announced some months ago that they would have what they termed as “a friendly fight” with their coalition partners in the Maharashtra government. This gave the Pawars a clear idea that the BJP would contest almost all the seats in their home bastion of Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad, pushing them to open negotiations within the family, and finally on Sunday (Dec 28), Ajit Pawar announced that both factions of the NCP will fight as a joint unit in Pune as well as the Pimpri-Chinchwad municipal corporations. 

Ironically, while Ajit Pawar will fight the BJP in his home territory of Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad, he will continue to share power with the saffron party in the Maharashtra government! On Sunday evening, at a public rally in Pimpri-Chinchwad, Ajit Pawar was seen using harsh language against the BJP. He blamed the BJP for the civic body’s financial troubles and claimed that this was one of Asia’s richest civic bodies during his rule. The voters and political observers are now wondering how Ajit Pawar fought all recent elections, such as the assembly election and even the Lok Sabha polls, in alliance with the BJP if the party, allegedly, according to him, had caused so much damage to the civic body in his political bastion?

Tuesday was the last day of filing nominations for the upcoming civic polls. There was hectic activity among all parties, as almost every political party struggled to keep the candidate list under wraps so that a rebellion could be avoided. This had a major impact on the field, especially in cities like Pune, Nashik, Thane, and other places, as the alliance partners of the BJP decided to go ahead and file nominations for almost all seats. In essence, this means that just as the Maha Vikas Agadi, or MVA, alliance has collapsed ahead of civic polls, similarly the BJP-led NDA Alliance is also almost non-existent in most cities apart from Mumbai. The civic polls have exposed the opportunism of not just the powers that be but also of political leaders from various parties. In a bid to keep their activists happy, many leaders went to the extent of grabbing the nomination forms, which are officially called AB forms, and filing them before the deadline without the party high command’s approval, leading to chaos.

It will be interesting to see what the Pawar uncle and nephew duo will do when the results of the polls come out. In his 58-year political career, since he got elected to the Maharashtra state assembly in 1967, Sharad Pawar has never been seen openly getting into any alliance led by the BJP. He announced support for the BJP state government in 2014 from outside to ensure stability in Maharashtra. But has never been part of the BJP government either in New Delhi or in Mumbai. His nephew, Ajit Pawar, separated from him and became part of the BJP-led NDA government in Maharashtra in 2023. But now it is a historic event—as Sharad Pawar and Ajit Pawar get together. It is clear that Ajit Pawar will continue in the Maharashtra government in partnership with the BJP. The big question is, post civic polls, will the NCP-SP (Sharad Pawar’s party) also be part of that government?

Rohit Chandavarkar is a senior journalist who has worked for 31 years with various leading newspaper brands and television channels in Mumbai and Pune.