Crucial legal pointers for Pawar vs Pawar from Sena vs Sena

Even as 37 of his 53 MLAs ostensibly defected and joined hands with the BJP-Sena government in Maharashtra, NCP chief Sharad Pawar was quick to say on Sunday evening that he would not be pursuing a legal battle, choosing instead to go to the people directly.

- Utkarsh Anand

Hours after his nephew Ajit Pawar claimed that the NCP would ally with the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha and Maharashtra assembly elections, Pawar, 82, said that there is no need to fight legally the issues of vertical split in the party and Ajit Pawar's claim over the NCP party name and symbol. The NCP chief expressed his resolve to rebuild his party from scratch.

The statements of the Maratha leader, who has spent over five decades in politics, suggest that his faction may not follow the course that the Uddhav Thackeray led Shiv Sena camp undertook under strangely similar circumstances last year.

The senior Pawar's indisposition might have factored in the rulings by the Supreme Court and the Election Commission of India (ECI) when Thackeray resorted to a bruising legal battle after Eknath Shinde triggered a similar rebellion, causing a vertical split in Shiv Sena last year. A close look at the bizarre resemblance between the two rebellions and the verdicts in Sena vs Sena may lend some hints on why Sharad Pawar talked about going to the people's court instead of battling it out with a team of heavyweight lawyers.

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