Ajit Pawar’s assurance to Muslims is hot air

It was with good reason that the Muslims felt they had in the NCP leader a voice in the Mahayuti government. Sadly, Ajit Pawar has not lived up to that promise.

It’s just the third month of 2025 but it’s already spelt bad news for Maharashtra’s Muslims. Amid this gloom, has the community found a saviour in ‘Dada’, as Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader and deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar is called?

Pawar’s remarks at an iftar party hosted by him last week, threatening action against anyone who intimidated Muslims made headlines. Both through words and appearance: wearing a fur cap at Mumbai’s Islam Gymkhana, where every political event connected with the state’s Muslims is held, Pawar appeared to convey a message of reassurance to a besieged community.

In the run-up to the Assembly elections last year, Muslims decided to repeat their Lok Sabha choice and vote for the Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition. The MVA’s victory in the Lok Sabha polls — it won 30 seats against the ruling Mahayuti’s 17 — only firmed up the community’s resolve. However, seeing the faltering seat share adjustments for the Assembly polls between the MVA’s constituents, many Muslim activists felt the community should not cut its ties with the Mahayuti. Pawar was the reason. They saw in him one who would provide much-needed access to a government in which two out of three partners swore by Hindutva.

This was no idle hope. Soon after he joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde) alliance, Pawar as finance minister promised welfare measures for Muslims, including a relook at the 5% reservation in education which had been proposed by the Congress-NCP government and upheld by the Bombay High Court. (Pawar was finance minister in that government too.)

The actual largesse, however, came on the eve of the Assembly polls, through increased Budget allocations for loans to minorities, and the doubling of madarsa teachers’ salaries. Pawar also promised to take up the controversial Wakf Bill amendments proposed by the BJP, with NDA constituents Nitish Kumar and N Chandrababu Naidu.

The 2024 Lok Sabha elections had come as a shock to Pawar, as they had to BJP leader and Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. While he did not use loaded terms such as ‘vote jihad’ as Fadnavis did to blame Muslims for the BJP’s defeat, Pawar cited Muslim alienation as one of the reasons for his party faction’s poor show (his wife lost from his stronghold Baramati and his faction of the NCP won only one out of the four seats it contested).

Increased funds for Muslims were one way of wooing them back. But Pawar went a step further: his was the only party which gave 10% of its Assembly tickets to Muslims.

It wasn't just realpolitik that motivated Pawar. He had always been the odd man out in the BJP-led alliance. The difference between him and the others was obvious at the last Mahayuti Lok Sabha campaign rally in Mumbai, addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Pawar was the only alliance partner to assure the audience that the Constitution would not be changed. This fear was one of the main reasons for the BJP’s reduced seats nationwide in the Lok Sabha polls. Pawar was also the only one not to raise the ‘Jai Sri Ram’ slogan at the start of his speech. Instead, he invoked the ‘Shivaji-Phule-Shahu-Ambedkar’ legacy which has traditionally been invoked by all non-Hindutva parties in Maharashtra. The same legacy was recalled by him when he criticised the ‘batengey toh katengey’ slogan on which the BJP fought the Assembly elections.

Thus, it was with good reason that the Muslims felt they had in the NCP leader a voice in the Mahayuti government.

Sadly, Pawar has not lived up to that promise. Muslims would have ignored the failure of the Mahayuti government to implement all its promises. What is impossible for them to ignore is their constant baiting under the Mahayuti government. The targeting began soon after the BJP-Sena alliance took over in June 2022, and hasn’t stopped since. Among the repeat hate speech offenders is BJP MLA Nitesh Rane, who was made cabinet minister of fisheries by Fadnavis.

Apart from a few remarks of condemnation, Pawar has done nothing to alleviate this hounding of Muslims. Even those remarks have come in response to questions. 

Perhaps too much was expected of Ajit Pawar. The same man who had reassured Muslims in February 2024 that he was there for them, could declare just nine months later that Muslims had faced no problems under the Mahayuti government.

Merely two days after Pawar’s reassurance to his ‘Muslim brothers’ at his iftar party, his government demolished the house of the main accused in the Nagpur riots, in violation of Supreme Court orders, despite knowing that the high court was hearing the matter.

The NCP leader’s grandiose words can thus only be regarded as hot air.

Jyoti Punwani is a senior journalist.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.