From 4-Time Maha CM to BCCI Chief, Know All About NCP Veteran Sharad Pawar

Sharad Govindrao Pawar, the president of the Nationalist Congress Party, on Tuesday announced to step down as the party chief after holding the post for 24 years. Speaking at a book launch of his autobiography in Mumbai, the 82-year-old leader’s dramatic announcement was met with protests by party workers and leaders. He  said that a panel of senior NCP leaders will draw a future course of action.

“I have decided to step down as the president of the Nationalist Congress Party,” Pawar said, adding that he would continue his “political and social work in public life.”

From student politics to becoming Maharashtra chief minister four times, and a decade-long stint as Union minister, Pawar has been a master at political moves.

Here’s all about Sharad Pawar’s career so far that makes him an unforgettable face in Indian politics:

• Pawar was active in student politics and always preferred the Congress. He began his political journey by joining the Youth Congress in 1958 and became the Pune district Youth Congress president. By 1964, he was among the known faces in the Maharashtra Youth Congress and was in constant touch with top leaders of the grand old party.
• He fought and won his first MLA election on a Congress ticket from his home turf Baramati constituency and since then has been a member of either the state legislature or Parliament.
• He founded the NCP in 1999 after separating from the Indian National Congress (INC). In the same year, he was diagnosed with oral cancer and had undergone surgery in April 2004.
• Pawar has served as a four-time chief minister of Maharashtra. In 1978, Pawar, then 38, became the youngest CM of Maharashtra. In 1988, he became the chief minister of Maharashtra for the second time. In 1990, he became chief minister for the third time. In 1993, he again became the CM for the fourth time after then-chief minister Sudhakarrao Naik stepped down following riots in Mumbai.
• He has also served as the Minister of Defence in the cabinet of PV Narsimha Rao and handled the portfolio till March 1993.  After the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, he became the Union Minister of Agriculture in the Manmahon Singh-led central government.
• Pawar, who hails from Maharashtra’s Baramati city, is a prominent face in the state politics and was a crucial person who stitched together an unlikely coalition of the NCP, Congress and Shiv Sena (Uddhav Thackeray) to form the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government in the 2019 state assembly polls.
• Other than politics, Pawar served as the Chairman of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) from 2005 to 2008 and as the president of the International Cricket Council (ICC) from 2010 to 2012. He was also the chief of the Mumbai Cricket Association from October 2013 to January 2017.
• In 2017, he was awarded with Padma Vibhushan, the second-highest civilian honour of India.
• In June 2020, Pawar was re-elected to the Rajya Sabha.
• During campaigning for the 2019 Maharashtra by-polls, Pawar gave a historic speech in Satara amid heavy rains. The NCP patriarch, who got completely drenched in the rain, continued his speech from the dais, refusing to take an umbrella saying that a leader must not cover himself when his party workers are fighting rain. This speech turned out to be the game changed in the by-elections as Pawar significantly ate into the vote share of BJP and Congress.

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