Air crash in India’s Maharashtra kills key state leader Ajit Pawar

MUMBAI – The deputy chief minister of India’s wealthiest state of Maharashtra, Mr Ajit Pawar, was killed on Jan 28, along with four people on board his charter aircraft that went down in flames, the aviation regulator said.

Mr Pawar, who hailed from a top political family, was en route to his home region to canvass in local body elections, the media said.

Two members of his staff and two crew members were also aboard the VSR Ventures-operated Learjet 45 aircraft, the directorate general of civil aviation said.

“No person on board has survived,” it added in an initial statement.

Mr V.K. Singh, the director of VSR Ventures, told broadcaster India Today that the plane crashed during its approach to the city of Baramati, but the cause was not clear.

“The aircraft is 100 per cent safe,” he said. “The crew was fairly experienced.”

Video footage showed billows of smoke rising from the burning wreckage of the plane, scattered across an open field.

“At first, it was on fire. After that, there were four or five more explosions,” an unidentified witness told the ANI news agency, after seeing the plane crash and explode.

But the flames were too fierce to pull anyone out, he added.

Mr Pawar had backed Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party in the state government, leading a faction that split in 2023 from the opposition Nationalist Congress Party.

In a post on social media platform X, Mr Modi said Mr Pawar’s death was “shocking and saddening”.

The media said Mr Pawar’s aircraft, travelling from India’s financial capital of Mumbai, tried to make an emergency landing in the family stronghold of Baramati, 250km away, where he was set to canvass in the elections.

Reuters holds a minority stake in ANI. REUTERS