Ajit Pawar's Death Reshapes Maharashtra's Political and Economic Landscape
Over the past 14 years, Maharashtra has lost five prominent politicians to untimely deaths: former Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh (2012), former Deputy Chief Minister Gopinath Munde (2014), former Deputy Chief Minister R.R. Patil (2015), MP Rajiv Satav (2021), and Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar (2026). The state mourned each time, but Ajit Pawar’s death carried a distinct character. Alongside political tributes, major business houses placed advertisements in newspapers. Real estate firms, poultry companies, dairy cooperatives, and textile manufacturers remembered him. The difference signals what lies ahead: Maharashtra’s politics and economy will change fundamentally without him.
Until a few years ago, when Ajit worked with his uncle Sharad Pawar in the undivided Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), few grasped the influence he wielded. He operated behind the curtain. Ajit’s political journey began in 1982 when he was elected to the board of a cooperative sugar factory. In 1991, he became chairman of the Pune District Central Cooperative Bank, a position he held for 16 years until 2007. After 2004, with Sharad Pawar occupied by national politics, Ajit handled major state issues for the NCP. From governance to deal-making, he called the shots.
The cooperative sector forms the backbone of Maharashtra’s political economy. The state has 208 sugar factories (104 cooperative and 104 private) that employed around two lakh workers in the 2023-24 season. About 40 lakh farmers grow sugarcane. The annual turnover of the sugar industry, directly and indirectly, stands at Rs.1 lakh crore. Pune district alone has over 21 sugar factories, with 12 being cooperatives, contributing 12.17 per cent to the state’s sugar output. Maharashtra accounts for 35 per cent of India’s total sugar production.
Governing Maharashtra demands mastery of both urban and rural economies. The state has 45 per cent urban and 55 per cent rural population. Urban economy involves Floor Space Index, Transferable Development Rights, drainage politics, development plans. Rural economy requires understanding Minimum Support Price for sugarcane, cotton prices, export of horticulture produce, dairy business, poultry, cattle feed industry, seeds industry. Ajit Pawar understood these sectors deeply and could intervene during crises.
In June 2025, he publicly called for raising the minimum selling price of sugar from Rs.31 per kg to Rs.40 per kg, stating the industry could not sustain itself at current rates. He advocated for programmes like the Jalyukt Shivar water conservation scheme, river-linking projects, and grid-based water supply systems for farmers. People across sectors trusted him to find solutions.
Over time, Ajit calculated that this command mattered only if he remained in power. When he split from Sharad Pawar, he invoked a principle from Y.B. Chavan, Maharashtra’s first Chief Minister and Sharad’s mentor. Chavan, while rejoining Congress in 1981, had said the marginalised communities needed political power for at least two more generations before they could stand independently. Ajit wanted power to protect his influence, political and financial, in his areas of interest.
In June 2025, Ajit contested his first cooperative election in nearly 40 years for the chairmanship of Malegaon Sahakari Sakhar Karkhana in Baramati, intensely campaigning with 15 rallies across six villages. He won the election in July 2025, defeating rival panels supported by both the BJP’s Chandrarao Taware and Sharad Pawar. In the 2024 Assembly election, Sharad Pawar’s supporters helped Ajit win because he had aligned with the BJP, which ruled in Delhi. The calculation was simple: if Ajit stayed in the ruling alliance, they would survive longer. Now, without Ajit, these supporters must find another patron.
Ajit’s politics descended from Sharad Pawar, who was mentored by Y.B. Chavan. This tradition traces to the Brahmin-non-Brahmin movement that Keshavrao Jedhe and Dinkarrao Javalkar built into a political force within Congress in pre-Independence India. The people around Ajit were Maratha strongmen in their districts. Many were known faces from the Maratha reservation movement of the past two decades. They wanted power for patronage to their sugar mills, dairies, other cooperative institutions. Factory owners influence local votes; farmers’ produce is sold to mills based on political affiliation. Their electorate has been anti-BJP for generations. Being with Ajit provided them a workable arrangement. Ajit understood these ground dynamics. He belonged to the system that built political empires for regional leaders in Maharashtra over decades. The new leader these district strongmen need must have two abilities: understanding their electorate and grasping their complex economics.
Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis now has the opportunity and power to anchor these politicians and businessmen. But he faces two challenges. He is Brahmin by birth. The Maratha community, approximately 35 per cent of the state population, has been vocal against him in recent times. Fadnavis tried for ten years but a large section of the community remains beyond his influence. His second challenge: he has often miscalculated rural issues. From the farmers’ strike of 2017 to understanding multi-dimensional agrarian problems, Fadnavis failed to show command.
Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde is Maratha by birth, but he is seen as an urban politician because his rise came from Thane city. He lacks deep understanding of the rural economy. The same applies to Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena leadership. Sharad Pawar is now too old and out of power. In Ajit’s faction, some leaders exist, but the leadership will unlikely go to them. His wife Sunetra Pawar is new to state politics’s intricacies. Maharashtra Congress has a range of leaders to fill this vacuum, but they lost the art of fighting from opposition. People and businessmen need confidence in a leader. An opposition leader earns that confidence by showing fighting spirit and raising issues correctly. Right now, Maharashtra Congress lacks such leadership.
In this situation, the ruling party gets a large share. If NCP (Ajit) or NCP (Sharad) fails to protect their flock—through merger or otherwise—the BJP will eventually absorb them. Those ideologically opposed to the BJP will try to see their future in Congress. Once the political ground shifts, money follows. The political and financial order established over 30-plus years will now begin dismantling. This may be the biggest change in Maharashtra politics in decades. Ajit’s death has altered the state’s dynamics fundamentally.
