The Baramati Parivar

The Pawars' family bastion since 1967 is now witnessing a second uncle-nephew fight

- Jinit Parmar

JUST seven kilometres from the tehsil office in the Baramati constituency that elected Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar as legislator, his uncle—Nationalist Congress Party (SP) supremo Sharad Pawar, who represented Baramati from 1967 to 1991—told a public gathering in Nirvagaj village on June 19 that all farmers’ issues could be resolved if and when “the power of the state government comes into our [the Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi’s] hands”. The NCP (SP) supremo and key MVA leader was touring drought-affected villages in Baramati, around 100 km southeast of Pune city, that contributed around 12.17 per cent of Maharashtra’s sugarcane production in 2022-23, according to the Pune-based Vasantdada Sugar Institute.

Along with Nashik’s Malegaon tehsil, Baramati—bastion of the Pawars, one of India’s most popular and powerful political families, since 1967, the year of the uprising in Naxalbari, 30 km from West Bengal’s Siliguri town—is among the largest producers of the water-guzzling cash crop. Water scarcity has long plagued Baramati, though factories of multinationals, under-construction buildings of burgeoning realty projects and newly paved roads give the town of 429,000 inhabitants a shine like no other tehsil town.