Sharad Pawar

Sharad Pawar was born on 12 December 1940.Pawar is from the town of Baramati in the Pune district of Maharashtra. Pawar is one of the ten children (six sons and four daughters) born to Govindrao Pawar and Shardabai Pawar. Pawar is married to Pratibha (nee Shinde). They have one daughter, Supriya who is married to Sadanand Sule. Supriya currently represents the Baramati constituency in the 15th Lok Sabha (India’s house of elected representatives). Pawar studied at Brihan Maharashtra College of Commerce (BMCC), University of Pune in Pune. He was an average student, however, active in student politics.

Sharad Pawar entered the Maharashtra legislative assembly for the first time in 1967 from Baramati, representing the undivided Congress Party. Yashwantrao Chavan was the political mentor of Sharad Pawar.Pawar broke away from the Congress to form a coalition government with the Janata Party in 1978, becoming the Chief Minister of Maharashtra for the first time at a time when Indira Gandhi had become incredibly unpopular due to her imposition of Emergency in 1975. Pawar took over the Presidency of his Congress(S) in 1983. For the first time, he won Lok Sabha election from Baramati parliamentary constituency in 1984. He also won state assembly elections of March 1985 from Baramati and preferred to continue in state politics for a while and resigned from the Lok Sabha. His party, the Indian Congress (Socialist) won 54 seats out of 288 in the state assembly and he became the leader of the opposition.

Till the Lok Sabha elections of 1996, Sharad Pawar served as the Leader of the Opposition in State Legislative Council. In June 1999, Pawar and Sangma founded the Nationalist Congress Party. His party had to align with the Congress party to form a coalition government in Maharashtra as neither party could win an absolute majority on its own in the 1999 assembly elections. After 2004 Lok Sabha elections, he joined the United Progressive Alliance government headed by Manmohan Singh as the Minister of Agriculture. He was appointed Union Minister of Agriculture and of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution on 28 May 2009. Pawar also served as the Chairman of the Board of Control for Cricket in India from 2005 to 2008. In 2010, Sharad Pawar became the International Cricket Council president after England’s David Morgan.

In January 2012, He announced that he will not contest the next Lok Sabha election (Upcoming in 2014) and make way for a younger leadership, a move that is bound to create a stir in his party as well as the Congress.