Ajit Pawar took oath as Maharashtra's Deputy Chief Minister for the sixth time on December 5, 2024, at a ceremony held at Azad Maidan in Mumbai. His political career spans nearly four decades, starting in the late 1980s with the Indian National Congress and later joining the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in 1999. He has represented the Baramati Assembly constituency eight times since 1991, often winning by large margins. In 2019, Ajit briefly left the NCP to join a BJP-led government but returned after the coalition collapsed. He later served as Deputy CM in the Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance with Shiv Sena and Congress under Uddhav Thackeray for over two years. In 2023, Ajit Pawar led a split in the NCP, aligning his faction with the BJP-Shiv Sena coalition headed by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde. The Election Commission of India officially recognized his faction as the NCP in February 2024. The Mahayuti alliance of BJP, Shiv Sena (Shinde faction), and NCP won 233 out of 288 assembly seats in the November 2024 elections, marking the largest victory in Maharashtra since the 1980s. Ajit Pawar now serves alongside Eknath Shinde and Devendra Fadnavis as Deputy Chief Ministers.