Shirur MP Amol Kolhe was set to be named the state chief of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) after the merger, Karjat-Jamkhed MLA and Ajit Pawar's nephew Rohit Pawar has claimed.
Ajit Pawar was to lead party post-merger
NCP-SP Maharashtra chief Shashikant Shinde, in a tribute published in the February 2026 edition of party magazine 'Rashtravadi', claimed that Ajit Pawar was supposed to lead the NCP after the merger of the two factions.
He also claimed that "manoeuvres by invisible forces, threats, and a web of false allegations" created a situation that compelled late Ajit Pawar to step out of the parent organisation, leading to the split in the Sharad Pawar-founded party.
Shinde wrote that a quiet process of "correcting past mistakes" had been underway for the last four to five months, noting that Ajit Pawar was in dialogue with Sharad Pawar and Jayant Patil to reunite the two factions.
The departed leader had taken a lead role in the recent municipal corporation and Zilla Parishad poll campaigns to signal this homecoming, Shinde added.
A formal decision to merge both factions of the NCP was to be made on February 12 in the presence of party patriarch Sharad Pawar, he further wrote.
Ajit Pawar was discussing merger
Senior NCP leader and Maharashtra Minister Hasan Mushrif has also admitted that Ajit Pawar was holding talks with NCP-SP leaders on the merger of the two factions.
"I have said it many times that Ajit Pawar was discussing the merger of the two NCPs... no (other) leader from NCP was part of it. We are not claiming that no discussion about the merger took place. (But) now, after the demise of Ajit Dada, the situation has changed. We will have to take the BJP into confidence," he said.
"We used to get calls (from Ajit Pawar) that if both the factions come together, they will have to contest the (local body) polls on one symbol. But beyond this, dada never talked to us (about merger )," he added.
