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MUMBAI: GenNext's clamour for power and unwillingness to wait for it have resulted in some of Maharashtra 's key political families resembling precarious houses of cards as the decks are cleared for the Lok Sabha elections.

The done thing in dynastic politics has always been for youngsters to spend some time learning the ropes in the background or on the sidelines, often in the shadow of the patriarchs. Even if ideologically, compartments ceased to be watertight decades ago, with the Pawar family of Baramati and the Vikhe Patils of Ahmednagar too going off in more than one direction, the core value of gradually climbing up the ladder was not under threat. Now suddenly it is, as a result of overarching ambition and a now-or-never attitude.

And the Pawar and Vikhe Patil dynasties are among the first to have been at the receiving end this poll season. Sharad Pawar initially made it clear he and daughter Supriya Sule would be the only two members of the family contesting the LS polls. But his nephew Ajit's son Parth pressed on, claiming the Maval seat for himself, until Pawar Sr deftly resolved the issue and gave Parth the go-ahead while withdrawing from the fray himself. And when leader of opposition Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil of Congress failed in his attempts to wrest the Ahmednagar LS seat from NCP in his son Sujay's favour, Sujay quickly joined the BJP .

Supriya Sule denied on Wednesday that the Parth episode had created a rift in the Pawar family. "For me and Ajitdada, family ties are of greater importance than anything else. Blood is thicker than the elixir of politics," she said.

However, some seniors are confused and distraught. "Everything is moving at a frenetic pace. A young politician wants to make it big in too short a span of time by using the family name," a senior NCP functionary said. "A young scion had to spend a couple of years by the side of the patriarch before graduating to bigger opportunities. A panchayat samiti or zilla parishad membership was the first step of the ladder," the functionary said.

The transition of power and political legacy was smooth in many political families in the 1960s, such as the Hireys of Nashik, the Vartaks of Virar, the Vikhe Patils, the Pawars, and the Chavans of Nanded. The Thackeray clan of Mumbai was the first to face open revolt by one of its young members, Raj Thackeray.

Interestingly, the number of Maharashtra leaders who showed no great interest in pushing their kith and kin into politics was impressive. Among them were Congressmen like Yashwantrao Chavan, Vasantdada Patil (his son briefly dabbled in politics before fading into oblivion) and Vasantrao Naik, and opposition stalwarts such as S M Joshi, N G Goray, George Fernandes and Mrinal Gore.

Those who were keen on handing over political legacy to their children took care to groom them. NCP veterans spoke about how Pawar Sr put his daughter through the paces when she decided to join the family vocation. Sule, now an NCP leader, said, "My father made me go from one Mantralaya department to the other with files to study the mechanism of the state administration when I took up the issue of women's empowerment. Being a member of a political family means more hard work."

Gopinath Munde would make daughter Pankaja sit next to him during media interviews or while studying papers of a complicated development issue, it is said.

The political climate began to undergo a change after Raj Thackeray's revolt against Matoshree, making Maharashtra's netas aware of GenNext's stirrings.

Even today, however, many upcoming scions are eager to hone their political skills, among them Yuva Sena chief Aditya Thackeray, Amit Thackeray, son of MNS chief Raj Thackeray and Narayan Rane's son Nitesh.

Then there are those like Milind Deora, Praniti Shinde and Amit Deshmukh of the Congress and Poonam Mahajan of the BJP who have succeeded in good measure in stepping out of their father's shadow. "But some refuse to be low-profile. An expensive lifestyle and vanity may lead to a disconnect between young politicians and grassroot workers of a party," said a political commentator.

While Sule's view is that the young generation should be encouraged to join politics, she thinks they should put their shoulder to the wheel. "They can't keep flaunting their family card," she said.

Amit Thackeray feels gone are the days when members of a political clan could "bask in borrowed glory". "Nothing wrong if a politician's son or daughter joins their father. But they will have to prove their credentials by bonding with people and not just by hankering after an MP seat or ministerial post," he said.



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