It is official now.  It is going to be a Pawar vs. Pawar or NCP Vs NCP fight in the forthcoming Lok Sabha at NCP chief Sharad Pawar’s home turf of Baramati in western Maharashtra.

Two prominent members of the Pawar family –-- Sharad Pawar’s daughter and three-time MP Supriya Sule and deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar’s wife Sunetra Pawar – will take on each other in Baramati constituency.

Supriya Sule’s name figured prominently in the first list of five candidates that the Sharad Pawar-led NCP released for the Lok Sabha polls on Saturday.

The other candidates who have been nominated to contest the Lok Sabha polls are Nilesh Lanke (Ahmednagar),  Dr Amol Kolhe (Shirur), Bhaskar Bagare (Dindori-ST) and Amar Kale (Wardha).  An MLA and loyalist of Ajit Pawar, Lanke is the first MLA who returned to the camp of Sharad Pawar.  Sr Pawar rewarded him by nominating him as his party’s candidate from Ahmednagar. 

In the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls in Maharashtra, the focus will be on Baramati where two members of the Sharad Pawar’s family are contesting against each other for the first time.

Supriya of the Sharad Pawar-led NCP, a popular figure, will clash swords with her sister-in-law Sunetra Pawar, wife of deputy chief minister and Sharad Pawar’s politically estranged nephew Ajit Pawar.

Baramati Lok Sabha constituency has been represented by the Sharad Pawar family for nearly four decades now. While Sharad Pawar was a two-time MP, his nephew Ajit Pawar represented Baramati for one term, Supriya Supe was a  three-term MP from Baramati.

Sharad Pawar’s writ would run in Baramati for nearly decades. However, political equations changed in Maharashtra’s prestigious Lok Sabha constituency after his nephew Ajit Pawar rebelled against Sr Pawar, walked out of the NCP with a sizeable number of supporters and took oath as deputy chief minister in the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena-BJP alliance government in the state on July 2, 2023.

In the Gram Panchayat elections held in November last year, the Ajit Pawar-led NCP made inroads into the Baramati in the Gram Panchayat(GP) polls, when it walked away with 109  GP seats out of a total 231 seats followed among others by Sr Pawar-led NCP ( 27) and Congress (25).

Even before the announcement of the election schedule, both Sunetra Pawar and Supriya Sule have held a series of meetings.

Mobile vans (raths) of both Supriya Sule and Sunetra Pawar are going around the length and breadth of the constituency.

On her part, Supriya has played down the election against Sunetra, who happens to be her sister-in-law,  by saying:  “For me it is an ideological fight. There is nothing personal in the contest. Pawar Saheb has stood for a certain ideology and we are committed to it,” Supriya said.