Mumbai, Oct 12 (IANS): Nationalist Congress Party President Sharad Pawar on Thursday said that his nephew Ajit Pawar’s ambition to become the Chief Minister of Maharashtra will remain just a ‘dream’.

“Ajit Pawar becoming the CM is just a dream… It will never happen in reality,” said Sharad Pawar, in a swipe at his nephew who is the leader of the breakaway faction of NCP and the Deputy CM.

Sharad Pawar was asked about the ongoing row over various political upheavals in the NCP, including the revolt of July when Ajit Pawar split the party vertically to join the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance government as the third partner.

Ajit Pawar, 64, has already publicly made his ambitions clear on several occasions that after occupying the post of Deputy CM, he wants a ‘promotion’ and was very keen to become the state CM.

Subsequently, on a couple of occasions, he also adopted a practical stance saying that this would be possible only if he measured up to the magical ‘game of numbers’ (supporting MLAs) for claiming the post of CM.

However, Sharad Pawar’s latest assertion could prove to be a huge dampener for his nephew’s unabashed ambitions and also his die-hard supporters rooting for him as the future CM, if not the next.

In fact, frequently in the recent past, banners and posters have been put up in Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur and other places, proclaiming Ajit Pawar as ‘the Future CM’.

There has been no reaction to the statement from the Ajit Pawar faction so far, even as both the NCP groups are engaged in a legal tussle and a fight before the Election Commission of India for the control of the 25-year-old party founded by Sharad Pawar.