As Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Sunetra Pawar formally took charge as the NCP national president Thursday, succeeding her late husband Ajit Pawar, the writing was on the wall – that the NCP and the Sharad Pawar-led NCP (SP) factions are unlikely to reconcile their differences and make a decisive move towards their merger.
By asserting that the new NCP president’s appointment marked the beginning of “Sunetra parva (era)”, the party brass claims to have conveyed a message that they would not “buckle” under the Sharad Pawar faction’s “pulls and pressures”. Instead, Sunetra would drive the organisation on her own terms, taking forward the political legacy and…