Madan Bafna

Madan Harkachand Bafna, also known as Madanlal Bafna or Madan-sheth across Maval, was a Maharashtra politician, lawyer and educationist whose public life ran from a Vadgaon gram panchayat seat to the state cabinet and the organisational core of Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party. He died of a heart attack at a private hospital in Pune on 14 September 2026. Hindustan Times reported his age as 87; several Marathi outlets gave it as 86.

Bafna completed an LLB in 1967 and practised at the Vadgaon and Pune courts before moving fully into politics. While studying at Brihan Maharashtra College of Commerce (BMCC) in Pune he formed a friendship with Sharad Pawar that both men later described as lasting nearly six decades. Pawar recalled meeting him during college years and making a habit of stopping at Vadgaon on the old highway route to visit Madan-sheth at home. That personal habit, repeated over decades of travel between western Maharashtra and Pune, became part of how colleagues described the bond.

His electoral ladder was local first. He began at the Vadgaon gram panchayat, won a Zilla Parishad seat in the late 1970s, chaired the Maval Panchayat Samiti, and became a recognised organiser for Congress in Maval taluka and Pune district. In 1985 he won the Maval Assembly seat for Congress on the campaign slogan "Sabka Apna, Madan Bafna", and held the constituency again in 1990 for a decade in the Vidhan Sabha. Those years fixed him as the taluka's most visible Congress face in an era when Maval was still treated as a rural and peri-urban corridor rather than a Pune suburb.

In 1989 he entered the Maharashtra cabinet as minister of state for revenue and urban development, the first person from Maval taluka to receive a ministerial berth. After the 1990 victory he also handled law and justice and finance as minister of state, and served as guardian minister for Thane and Pune districts. The combination of law training and local networks made him useful in revenue and justice files that touched land, cooperatives and district administration.

He lost Maval in 1995 to Ruprekha Dhore and failed again in a three-cornered 2004 contest against Digambar Bhegde, but remained an influential local interlocutor. Defeat did not end his political relevance; workers continued to treat him as a guide for booth work, social disputes and educational institutions.

When Pawar founded the Nationalist Congress Party in 1999, Bafna was among the early Maharashtra organisers and later held state-level party responsibility, including a reported turn as NCP vice-president. After Ajit Pawar's split he stayed with Sharad Pawar's faction (NCP-SP). Outside the Assembly he backed education through the Shri Sant Tukaram Shikshan Prasarak Mandal, helping establish D.Ed. and B.Ed. colleges in Maval, including the Harkachand Raichand Bafna D.Ed. College at Vadgaon where the public paid respects after his death.

Admitted to hospital in Pune on 13 September 2026 after uneasiness, he suffered a fatal heart attack the next morning. Sharad Pawar, Supriya Sule, Rohit Pawar and Dilip Walse Patil were among those who issued tributes. Pawar called him a colleague who had stood by him for nearly sixty years and pledged support to the family. Last rites were held at Vadgaon Maval on 15 September 2026. He is survived by his wife, a son, four daughters, and siblings.

In Maval politics his name remains shorthand for a long grass-roots path from sarpanch-level work to the state ministry, tied for a lifetime to Pawar's circle and to local colleges and cooperative life. The frank style that Supriya Sule highlighted, and the habit of receiving visitors at Vadgaon that Pawar remembered, are the traits local reporting returned to again and again in the days after his death.