The 63-year-old Rajya Sabha MP could change into the primary girl Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra as there are sturdy indications that the Nationalist Congress Get together (NCP) management is backing Sunetra Pawar to fill the vacuum created by the demise of her husband Ajit Pawar. Sunetra has been married to the Pawar household for greater than 40 years, however till lately she had largely stayed away from energetic politics.
Sunetra was born in Osmanabad (now Darashiv) in 1963 right into a Maratha household with deep political roots and grew up in an surroundings formed by public life. Her father Bajirao Patil was a distinguished native politician, and her brother Padamsingh Bajirao Patil emerged as an influential politician within the district within the Nineteen Eighties. This positioned her in some of the influential political households in Maharashtra even earlier than she married into the Pawar household.
Ms. Sunetra accomplished her Bachelor’s diploma in Commerce from SB Arts and Commerce School, Aurangabad (now Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar) in 1983. In December 1985, her brother organized her marriage to Ajith after the 2 met for the primary time earlier that 12 months.
For many of her life, Sunetra distanced herself from formal politics and centered on social initiatives in Baramati. Her first main public works undertaking was at Katewadi, the ancestral village of the Pawar household close to Baramati. There, she observed poor sanitation and open defecation and led sanitation efforts.
Residents recall that she personally participated in cleanliness campaigns and inspired households to construct bathrooms. Subsequently, the village obtained the Centre’s ‘Nirmal Gram’ standing in 2006 as a consequence of its freedom from open defecation.
Katewadi was later developed right into a mannequin ecovillage with solar-powered road lights, biogas crops, waste administration methods, and natural farming practices. He received a number of awards together with Sant Gadgebaba Swachhata Abhiyan award. Villages additionally launched measures comparable to recording moms’ names together with fathers’ names in land data and selling girls’s self-help teams.
She was additionally concerned within the institution of Baramati Hello-Tech Textile Park in 2008. Authorised beneath the Centre’s Built-in Textile Park Plan, the 65-acre facility employs greater than 15,000 staff within the attire, textile and printing sectors, most of them girls. Sunetra Pawar chaired the undertaking.
Political profession and controversy
Sunetra entered electoral politics within the 2024 Lok Sabha elections after her husband fielded the NCP candidate from Baramati metropolis in opposition to his sister-in-law and NCP founder Sharad Pawar’s daughter Supriya Sule with help from the Bharatiya Janata Get together-led NDA.
Her candidacy positioned her on the middle of divisions inside the Pawar household and the NCP. She misplaced the election to Sule. Within the following months, she was nominated to the Rajya Sabha. The transfer was seen as Ajit Pawar’s try to present her a proper political position after Baramati’s defeat.
Since taking oath in June 2024, her attendance within the Rajya Sabha has been round 69%. She participated in 4 debates, in comparison with the nationwide common of 58, which interprets to a median of 10 debates a 12 months throughout a Rajya Sabha MP’s six-year time period.
Though Sunetra Pawar retains a low profile in public, her household is surrounded by controversy. In 2009, her brother, a former lawmaker, was named as the principle suspect within the 2006 homicide of Congress chief Pawanrahe Nimbalkar and his driver close to Navi Mumbai. The CBI has charged him with homicide and felony conspiracy. The case continues to be pending in court docket.
Sunetra’s identify additionally got here up in earlier investigations associated to the Maharashtra State Cooperative Financial institution case as a consequence of her affiliation with corporations concerned in sugar mill offers. In 2021, the Enforcement Directorate connected belongings associated to corporations linked to Ajit and Sunetra Pawar, neither of whom have been named within the company’s indictment.
In April 2024, the Financial Crimes Unit of the Mumbai Police filed a transparent grievance in opposition to her stating that no felony offense was discovered within the mortgage sanction or sale/lease of sugar mills linked to the financial institution.
Future challenges
Sunetra Pawar is soft-spoken and has restricted political expertise. If she is elevated to the position of senior NCP chief, she must take care of the occasion’s senior leaders who’ve held organizational and ministerial positions for a few years.
If the 2 NCP factions reunite, Sharad Pawar is anticipated to play a task in guiding the transition. In any other case, she has to rely totally on her sons Parth and Jay, each of whom are but to ascertain themselves politically, whereas managing occasion leaders who usually align themselves with the BJP to make sure their very own survival.
