BJP leader and cabinet minister Pankaja Munde's helicopter faced a technical issue right before she was to travel to Maharashtra's Latur on Tuesday. Munde was scheduled to fly from Sambhajinagar to Latur by helicopter to campaign for the Zilla Parishad elections, or district council election campaign.
The pilot flagged the issue before the scheduled trip, prompting the BJP leader to postpone her journey.
#BREAKING A technical fault was reported in the helicopter of BJP leader and cabinet minister Pankaja Munde, prompting her to cancel her planned helicopter journey from Sambhajinagar to Latur for district council election campaigning. The issue was flagged by the pilot in… pic.twitter.com/i99Xxzvhig
— IANS (@ians_india) February 3, 2026
This comes days after Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar's airplane crashed in Pune's Baramati during a second landing attempt. The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) Chief Pawar was flying in a small aircraft, a Learjet 45, owned and operated by VSR Ventures, from Mumbai to Baramati. He was to attend four key meetings ahead of the local body polls this month.
Pawar and four others on board, including pilot Sumit Kapur, co-pilot Shambhavi Pathak, Pawar's personal security officer Vidip Jadhav, and flight attendant Pinky Mali, were killed on the spot.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has ordered a special audit of VSR Ventures to investigate the checks and balances and logbooks of the company. It is meant to check if the company was keeping tabs on the maintenance of the aircraft and filing the logbook as per the protocol.
On the other hand, the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) is probing the circumstances that led to the crash.
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