MUMBAI, July 14 -- Five months after Sunetra Pawar was elected national president of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), her appointment has been challenged by the party's former national secretary, Sachchidanand Singh. Singh has sought a fresh election, and a declaration of both the presidential election and the revised list of office-bearers of the National Working Committee (NWC) as null and void. The development comes amid mounting unrest among senior leaders in the NCP over the way the party was being run by the new leadership - deputy chief minister Sunetra Pawar and her son, Rajya Sabha MP Parth. The party's national working president Praful Patel publicly acknowledged for the first time on Monday the growing unease in the organisation, stating that it needed to take "corrective measures". A legal notice sent to Sunetra Pawar on July 9 (which the party received on Monday) by Singh underlines that following the untimely death of NCP's former national president Ajit Pawar, national working president Praful Patel was supposed to officiate in that position, until the election to fill the position for the remainder of the term was conducted, adhering to the amended constitution submitted to the Election Commission of India (ECI) on February 16. The seven-page notice highlights how NCP general secretary Brijmohan Shrivastav, "without following the prescribed procedure, passed a resolution on February 18 and set the election process in motion". "He also convened the national convention to elect the new president without the sanction of the constitutionally designated officiating head. Therefore, the election of Noticee No 1 (Sunetra Pawar) as party president is seriously in question," it states. The notice has been served to Sunetra Pawar, Praful Patel and Brijmohan Shrivastav, giving the party 15 days to act, failing which Singh has threatened to move court. Incidentally, both Singh and Shrivastav were left out of the party's new NWC after Sunetra Pawar assumed charge as the party president. NCP spokesperson Suraj Chavan rejected the allegations made in the legal notice, saying the election was conducted strictly aligning with the party's constitution and the ECI guidelines. "It is merely an attempt to create a sensation. All the delegates had unanimously elected Sunetra vahini as the party's new president," Chavan told HT. Fissures deepened in the NCP since Ajit Pawar's death in a plane crash near Baramati on January 28. Soon after his wife Sunetra Pawar stepped up, differences surfaced when the designations of Praful Patel as national working president and Sunil Tatkare as Maharashtra unit president were omitted from the revised list of NWC office-bearers submitted to the ECI. The party tried to ease the backlash promising an update, which is yet to be delivered. The internal cracks within the party widened with the growing influence of Parth, who is widely perceived as calling the shots in the organisation, tacitly backed by his mother. "Sunetra vahini and Parth are trying to send a clear message of the party's change in command structure. However, they are new, and we are giving them a long rope. We will intervene when we believe the party's interests are at stake," a senior party leader said. Illustrating the unease in the ranks, another leader said, "As we lost the finance portfolio, our MLAs now have to approach the BJP directly for sanctioning development works. There is no Ajit Pawar to ensure their issues are resolved and adequate funds are allocated. The current leadership has not been able to fill that gap.' Acknowledging the challenges in the party, Praful Patel said on Monday, "It has been difficult to fill the vacuum created by the death of Ajit Dada. It is also a fact that the party needs to take corrective measures."...