- 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
Fire and wreckage were seen in Maharashtra's Baramati after a plane belonging to NCP chief and Maharashtra's Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar crashed, killing him and four others on board.
Pawar is among the five people killed in the plane crash that occurred during an emergency landing attempt., the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) confirmed. Among the others who died are two pilots and two passengers, including one attendant and Pawar's personal security officer.
Visuals from the spot showed mangled remains of the aircraft and police, emergency and other officials on site. Locals too were seen at the crash site, where smoke billowed from the crashed plane.
This incident occurred around 9 am, an hour after the Learjet 45 plane took 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 crash just 100 metres short. Locals, he said, tried to pull out passengers, but couldn't due to the massive fire that erupted.
Amid ongoing elections to the Zilla Parishads and Panchayat Samitis, Pawar was travelling from Mumbai to Baramati to attend a public meeting.
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, 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.
