A private plane carrying Ajit Pawar, the deputy chief minister of India’s Maharashtra state, crashed on Wednesday, killing him and four other people on board, authorities said.
The aircraft was en route to Baramati, Pawar’s home city, from India’s financial capital of Mumbai when it crash-landed in an open field and burst into flames some 254km (159 miles) from the state capital.
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The reason behind the crash was not immediately known, and an investigation is under way.
Who was Ajit Pawar?
Pawar, 66, was a key political figure and served as the second-highest elected official in Maharashtra, India’s wealthiest state.
He was an ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the state government, leading a faction that split in 2023 from the opposition Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).
He wielded considerable influence in the state’s sugar belt and was known for his ability to mobilise rural voters.
Born on July 22, 1959, Pawar started his political career with the Indian National Congress, commonly known as the Congress party, in the late 1980s, influenced by his uncle Sharad Pawar, according to a report in India’s The Hindu newspaper.
In 1991, he was first elected as a member of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly from the Baramati constituency, which he represented for a record eight terms.
In 1999, when his powerful uncle formed the NCP, Pawar joined it and served several terms as Maharashtra’s deputy chief minister in coalitions led by the NCP over the past two decades.
In 2019, Pawar briefly left the NCP to join the BJP’s cabinet in Maharashtra as a deputy chief minister. He later returned to the party and, in 2023, orchestrated a split within the NCP by aligning with the BJP-led coalition.
In February 2024, the Election Commission of India acknowledged Ajit Pawar’s faction as the official NCP. The same year, he was sworn in as Maharashtra’s deputy chief minister for a sixth time.
What’s Pawar’s legacy?
Pawar’s contribution to the development of his region was significant, said a report in The Indian Express newspaper, particularly in Maharashtra’s Pimpri-Chinchwad area, where he pushed “large-scale infrastructure projects, including wider roads and improved civic facilities”.
Baramati especially underwent a makeover, with several infrastructure projects attributed to him, as he supervised the development of his bastion with his uncle, Sharad Pawar.
However, Pawar was also accused of corruption in two prominent cases.
In an alleged Maharashtra irrigation scam, he was accused of involvement in irregularities in awarding contracts worth millions of dollars for civic projects between 1999 and 2009.
Last year, he was named in a land scam in Maharashtra’s Pune city, with a company owned by his son accused of buying reserved government land below the market value. Upon uproar, the deal was scrapped.
Government inquiries into both the alleged scams remain inconclusive.
How did Pawar die?
Pawar’s aircraft, travelling from Mumbai, tried to make an emergency landing in the family stronghold of Baramati, where he was set to canvass in the local elections.
The VSR Ventures-operated Learjet 45 aircraft crashed in an open field at about 8:30am (03:00 GMT) while landing at Baramati airport, local media reported.
The charter aircraft went down in flames, said the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), India’s aviation regulator.
Videos from the crash site showed smoke billowing from some of the burning wreckage of the plane, scattered across the open field.
“At first it was on fire, after that there were four or five more explosions,” an unidentified witness told India’s ANI news agency, after seeing the plane crash and explode. But the flames were too fierce to pull anyone out, he added.
Pawar was travelling with his personal security officer, an assistant, and two crew members at the time of the crash, the DGCA said.
VK Singh, the director of VSR Ventures, told broadcaster India Today the cause of the crash was not clear.
“The aircraft is 100 percent safe,” he said. “The crew was fairly experienced.”
What have been the reactions?
PM Modi described Pawar as a “leader of the people” in a post he shared on X. He said Pawar’s “untimely demise” was “shocking and saddening”.
“Shri Ajit Pawar Ji was a leader of the people … [with] a strong grassroots level connect,” Modi said, adding that he was a “widely respected” and “hardworking” political stalwart.
“His understanding of administrative matters and passion for empowering the poor and downtrodden were also noteworthy.”
Rahul Gandhi of the Congress party also posted his condolences on X, calling Pawar’s death “extremely painful”.
“I am with the people of Maharashtra in this hour of grief,” he wrote.
Maharashtra’s Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said he had “no words to express my emotions”.
