- Ajit Pawar's plane crashed during emergency landing in Baramati, killing him and four others
- The Learjet 45 lost control while landing, about an hour after departing from Mumbai
- The crash site showed wreckage and smoke with police and emergency officials present
Moments after Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar's plane crashed, killing him and four others, videos showed burning wreckage and smoke at the site in Baramati.
Ajit Pawar, his two aides, a crew member and the pilot were killed when the plane crashed while attempting an emergency landing at 8.46 am.
Visuals from the spot showed mangled remains of the Learjet45XR aircraft and a crowd of locals, policemen, emergency workers and other officials at the site.
The plane was on air for less than an hour after its take-off from Mumbai and reportedly lost control at the time of landing. An eyewitness said the plane seemed like it would crash when it was approaching the runway, and it did so just 100 metres short of it. Locals, he said, tried to pull out passengers, but couldn't due to the massive fire.
Ajit Pawar was flying to Baramati, the Pawar family stronghold, to campaign for the elections to Zilla Parishads and Panchayat Samitis. The NCP leader was scheduled to address a public meeting there.
In October 2024, a helicopter intended to pick up his party colleague Sunil Tatkare crashed in Pune, and there have been previous instances of emergency landings in the region due to bad weather.
Pawar was the longest serving Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra non-consecutively and has served as the deputy to chief ministers Prithviraj Chavan, Devendra Fadnavis, Uddhav Thackeray and Eknath Shinde.
He was elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time in 1991 from the Baramati Parliamentary constituency and later vacated the seat for his uncle Sharad Pawar. He was elected to the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly seven times from the Baramati Assembly constituency. He first won in a 1991 by-election and subsequently in 1995, 1999, 2004, 2009, 2019 and 2014.
In November 2019, he engineered a split in the NCP and joined a government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party and became the Deputy Chief Minister. In February 2024, the Election Commission awarded the party name and symbol to the faction headed by Ajit Pawar.
He is married to Sunetra Pawar, with whom he has two sons, Jay and Parth Pawar.
