Senior politician, socialist thinker and senior Congress leader Ratnakar Mahajan passed away in Pune early on Saturday, bringing to an end a long political career that spanned the Emergency, the Janata movement, the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).
Mahajan, who was imprisoned during the Emergency, was among Maharashtra’s prominent socialist voices and remained active in public life for decades. He had also served as executive chairman of the Maharashtra State Planning Board and later held important organisational esponsibilities in the Congress, including as a senior spokesperson and vice-president of the Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC). The final rites on Mahajan, 80, who breathed his last late on Friday, were performed at Vaikunth crematorium on Saturday afternoon, his family members said.
The suggestion triggered strong reactions within the NCP and eventually led to Mahajan’s resignation from the party. He also maintained that there was no ideological difference between the two parties to justify their continued separation. His resignation from the NCP eventually marked his return to the Congress, where he once again emerged as a prominent voice of the party in Maharashtra and served as its senior spokesperson and vice-president. “The news of the passing of Congress’s senior leader, spokesperson and pragmatic thinker Dr Ratnakar Mahajan is extremely heartbreaking.
One of the important episodes of his political career came in 2010, when Mahajan, then a senior NCP leader, suggested by writing a letter that the Sharad Pawar-led party should merge with the Congress. Because the Congress had led the freedom struggle and that the reason for the NCP’s creation was no longer relevant, he said at the time that he had proposed a merger.
Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee president Harshwardhan Sapkal said Mahajan’s death was a major loss to the state’s public and political life. Today, I paid my respects to his mortal remains and expressed my condolences to the family,” Pawar said.
