Ajit Pawar’s son Jay likely to be Baramati’s face in Assembly polls

MUMBAI: After he made a stunning statement earlier this week that it was a mistake to field his wife Sunetra Pawar against his cousin Supriya Sule as the Baramati candidate for Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in the Lok Sabha elections, in yet another unanticipated move deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar said on Thursday that his younger son Jay Pawar could be the face of the party from the family’s pocket borough in the forthcoming Assembly elections.
“We are living in a democracy and will give him a chance. I am not interested anymore, having already contested seven-eight times. If other local workers are keen, then the parliamentary board of the party will decide the contestant from Baramati,” said Pawar, responding to queries by mediapersons about Jay’s supporters demanding an opportunity for him to contest from Baramati. Pawar was in Pune on the second leg of the Jan Sanman Yatra.
Pawar, a seven-term MLA from the Baramati assembly seat, is currently on a state-wide tour to engage with the public, particularly women, and promote schemes launched by the state government in the recently presented 2024-25 state budget. On the other hand, as NCP (SP) is yet to name its candidate, Yugendra Pawar’s name has been doing the rounds for the Baramati assembly constituency. Yugendra is Ajit Pawar’s elder brother Shrinivas’s son and is actively campaigning in the constituency.
Incidentally, Ajit Pawar’s move came a day after his nephew Rohit Pawar, who remained loyal to Sharad Pawar, indicated that NCP was weighing a possibility of repeating the Baramati experiment by fielding someone from the Pawar family against him, and hinted it could be Ajit Pawar himself.
Rohit represents the Karjat-Jamkhed assembly constituency, in the Ahmednagar district of western Maharashtra.
Responding to Ajit Pawar’s move, state NCP president Sunil Tatkare said, the party was still keen that its leader remain firm in the saddle. “It is not only my wish; all of Maharashtra wants Ajit Pawar to lead the state, for which he has to contest the elections,” said Tatkare.
NCP working president and Rajya Sabha MP Praful Patel however said he was unaware of the demand for Jay Pawar to take on the reins in Baramati for the Assembly polls, and underlined that election tickets are finalized keeping in view the potential of the candidate. “All these questions are speculative. The party parliamentary board will decide the candidate based on their potential,” Patel said.
Who is Jay Pawar?
Jay Pawar is the younger son of the deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar. He was not in the political fray before NCP split up in 2023, and was looking after the family’s businesses in Dubai. He however started playing an active role in the party’s affairs subsequently under his father’s leadership. In the last Lok Sabha elections he had campaigned for his mother Sunetra.
In contrast, his elder brother Parth contested the Lok Sabha elections from Maval in 2019 and was defeated by the sitting MP Shrirang Barne.