[7][6] After a legal battle, the Supreme Court of India gave judgement in favour of the faction led by Ajit Pawar, and was allocated the party symbol and name.
The NCP was formed on 10 June 1999, by Sharad Pawar, P. A. Sangma, and Tariq Anwar after they were expelled from the Indian National Congress on 20 May 1999, for disputing the right of Italian-born Sonia Gandhi to lead the party.
[13] Despite the NCP being founded on opposition to the leadership of Sonia Gandhi, the party joined the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) to form the government of Maharashtra in October 1999.
[15] In the April and May 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the UPA lost to the rival National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by Narendra Modi and the NCP was out of government for the first time in ten years.
However, in a controversial move, on 23 November 2019, the BJP formed a government with support from the NCP, with Ajit Pawar as Deputy Chief Minister.
Finally, the NCP came back into power at the state level as part of the Maha Vikas Aghadi coalition formed with Shiv Sena and the Congress.
[24] In July 2023, Ajit Pawar, along with many of his supporters, left the Sharad Pawar-led NCP and joined the ruling Shiv Sena-BJP government as a Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra.
[31] The Nationalist Congress Party has been extensively criticized for several reasons such as political corruption, insensitive comments, links to the underworld, and moral policing.
This was revealed by former Supreme Court lawyer Ram Jethmalani, who had confirmed that after the March 1993 bombings in Bombay, Dawood Ibrahim had called him from London, saying that he was prepared to come to India and stand trial, on the condition that he should not be subjected to any third degree treatment from the police.
[33][34] In May 2005, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) workers stormed a pub in Pune, Maharashtra, broke window panes, damaged furniture, and thrashed visitors.
[39] Vaze and Deshmukh were also involved in collecting extortion money in December 2020 from members of the Indian Hotel and Restaurant Association (AHAR).
[41] On 23 February 2022, NCP President and leader Nawab Malik was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in a money laundering case and his alleged links with underworld don Dawood Ibrahim.
On 14 May 2022, Marathi television actress Ketaki Chitale was arrested by Mumbai Police for allegedly sharing an objectionable post about Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar.
Chitale, who was molested, and her modesty was outraged by the NCP workers, and was later granted bail, was booked under IPC sections 500 (defamation), 501 (printing or engraving defamatory matter) and 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc., and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony) of the Indian Penal Code.