It’s Ajit and family versus the rest of the Pawar clan, as brother too chooses uncle Sharad

For the first time since 1968, when Sharad Pawar first contested from the seat, Baramati is set to witness a first-of-its-kind Pawar versus Pawar battle.

The latest fissure in the “first family of Baramati” came after Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar’s elder brother, Sriniwas Pawar, publicly slammed him last week for “deserting our 84-year-old uncle”. Sriniwas also declared that he, and his wife and son were with cousin Supriya Sule, the sitting Baramati MP and Pawar senior’s daughter, who could be facing Ajit Pawar’s wife Sunetra from the seat.

Sriniwas told The Indian Express: “The BJP wants to finish off Sharad Pawar politically. They are behind the split in the party and the Pawar family. Ajit must remember that he became Deputy CM of Maharashtra four times because of Sharad Pawar, who let him have the reins of the party in the state while he was in Delhi.”

The siding of Sriniwas with the Sharad Pawar faction further cements the impression of Ajit’s “isolation” within the family — something he himself talked about recently.

While Ajit and Sriniwas’s two sisters are politically neutral, the others with Sharad Pawar include Ajit’s cousin Rajendra Pawar and his son Rohit, the sitting Karjat-Jamkhed MLA. Rajendra is the son of Appasaheb Pawar, Sharad Pawar’s elder brother.

Appasaheb’s other son Ranjit is now dead, but his wife Sunanda and daughter Sai have also thrown their weight behind Sule, as have Prataprao Pawar, the NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) chief’s younger brother, and his son Abhijit, who run the popular Marathi daily Sakal.

In Ajit’s corner appear to be only his immediate family – wife Sunetra and sons Parth and Jay. Last month, he suggested he was not intimated by this, saying: “The division in our family is clear.