Mumbai, Jan. 31 -- Sunetra Pawar, the wife of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Ajit Pawar, on Saturday took oath as Maharashtra's first woman Deputy Chief Minister, days after her husband and four others died in a plane crash in Baramati.

She has been given charge of excise duty, sports and youth welfare, and minorities development. Finance and planning, the portfolios handled by her husband, will be handled by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.

Sunetra Pawar, 62, was unanimously elected as the NCP Legislature Party leader earlier in the day. Her name was proposed by party leader Chhagan Bhujbal and seconded by Dilip Patil and a host of other MLAs. A letter informing of this decision was sent to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who then forwarded it to Governor Acharya Devvrat.

Soon after her swearing-in ceremony took place, Prime Minister Narendra Modi conveyed his best wishes to her. Rohit Pawar, MLA from Karjat-Jamkhed and a relative of Sunetra Pawar, in a post on X said that while no one can take the place of "Ajit dada", "at least in the form of Sunetrabai, we can see Ajit dada there somehow."

Until the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Sunetra Pawar had kept a low profile. In the Lok Sabha elections that year, she contested from Baramati as the candidate of her late husband's party, but was defeated by her sister-in-law and NCP (Sharad Pawar) MP Supriya Sule in the prestige battle. Sunetra Pawar was subsequently elected to the Rajya Sabha. All eyes are now on the direction that the NCP reunification talks would go.

Senior leaders of the Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party on Saturday maintained a guarded silence on the prospects of merger of the rival factions of the party, even as Union Minister Piyush Goyal said he did not expect it to happen anytime soon.

The NCP (SP) leaders, on the other hand, claimed that Ajit Pawar very much wanted the two factions to reunite, but party supremo and his uncle Sharad Pawar conceded that the process might face a roadblock now.

Union minister Goyal said the NCP headed by Ajit Pawar, as part of the Mahayuti government in Maharashtra, has performed very well. He added that Praful Patel has been appointed as the national president of the Nationalist Congress Party.NCP leaders Praful Patel and Sunil Tatkare refused to comment on the issue.

Emerging from a high-level meeting ahead of Sunetra Pawar's swearing-in, Tatkare said, "We have nothing to say on this matter right now."

Chhagan Bhujbal, another senior NCP leader, indicated that their priority was to maintain stability within the ruling BJP-NCP-Shiv Sena coalition.

Speaking in Baramati earlier in the morning, NCP patriarch Sharad Pawar said Ajit Pawar and NCP(SP) leader Jayant Patil were discussing the merger roadmap for the last four months.

"All discussions were held at their level, but it now appears the process may hit a roadblock following the (plane) accident. The talks were progressing in a positive direction, but the accident adversely affected the process," the Pawar senior said.

"It was Ajit's wish to unite the two factions, and now it is our wish that his wish should be fulfilled," he added

Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.