Senior Congress leader Ratnakar Mahajan dies in Pune at 80

Senior Congress leader Ratnakar Mahajan died in Pune early Saturday after a decades-long political career spanning the Emergency, Janata movement, Congress and NCP.

Senior Congress leader and socialist thinker Ratnakar Mahajan died in Pune early Saturday, ending a decades-long political career that spanned the Emergency, the Janata movement, the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).

Senior Congress leader Ratnakar Mahajan dies in Pune at 80

The final rites of Mahajan, who breathed his last late on Friday, will be performed at Vaikunth crematorium on Saturday afternoon, his family members said.

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 responsibilities in the Congress, including as a senior spokesperson and vice-president of the Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC).

One of the important episodes of his political career came in 2010, when Mahajan, then a senior NCP leader, suggested in a letter that the Sharad Pawar-led party should merge with the Congress. In an open letter to Pawar, Mahajan argued that the circumstances that had led to the formation of the NCP in 1999 no longer existed and questioned the rationale for maintaining two separate parties when the Congress and NCP had been jointly running the Maharashtra government.

The suggestion triggered strong reactions within the NCP and eventually led to Mahajan’s resignation from the party. He said at the time that he had proposed a merger because the Congress had led the freedom struggle and that the reason for the NCP’s creation was no longer relevant. He also maintained that there was no ideological difference between the two parties to justify their continued separation.

Mahajan’s political journey had itself reflected the changing currents of Maharashtra politics. A socialist leader, he had joined the Congress from the Janata Dal fold in the early 1990s along with Babanrao Pachpute. He left the Congress in 1999 and remained with the Pawar-led NCP for over a decade before his differences over the proposed merger prompted his exit.

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.

Mahajan was known for articulating his political views independently, often drawing on his socialist background and long association with public movements. His suggestion for an NCP-Congress merger, controversial at the time, remained one of the defining moments of his later political career.

“The profundity of his thoughts, his commitment to society, and his ideological guidance will forever remain inspiring. His demise has caused a great loss to Maharashtra’s social, political, and ideological spheres,” Congress chief Harshwardhan Sapkal Maharashtra Pradesh said.