Deputy Chief Minister Sunetra Pawar was named Pune District's Guardian Minister on Tuesday. This comes after her husband, Ajit Pawar, who was Pune's longest-serving Guardian Minister, died in a tragic
plane crash in Baramati last week.
It was reported that Maharashtra Minister of Higher and Technical Education Chandrakant Patil, who is currently the Guardian Minister of Sangli district, was likely to be given the additional responsibility of Pune. However, it wasn't to be.
How did Pune's Guardian Minister post change hands?
Between 2004 and 2014, Ajit Pawar served as the Guardian Minister in the Congress-led Democratic Front government. After the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 2014, Girish Bapat held the post until March 2019, when he was elected to the Lok Sabha from the Pune constituency. After that, the BJP appointed Chandrakant Patil to hold the post for a few months until the 2019 Assembly election.
Later, during the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government in 2019, Pawar became Pune's Guardian Minister and held the post until the Uddhav Thackeray-led government was in power. After it collapsed, Patil once again became the Guardian Minister of Pune. However, Patil had to reluctantly hand over the responsibility to Pawar after his Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) joined the ruling Mahayuti alliance.
The Mahayuti secured a landslide victory in the 2024 polls, and Pawar continued with the charge of Guardian Minister of Pune. Now, after his death, his wife Sunetra Pawar has been given the responsibility.
Sunetra Pawar becomes Dy CM
Three days after Ajit Pawar's death, Sunetra Pawar was unanimously elected as the leader of the NCP Legislature Party. On the same day, she became the first woman Deputy Chief Minister of the state.
