Ajit Pawar Dies In Plane Crash In Pune's Baramati: Funeral To Be Held Tomorrow Morning At 11 AM

Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Ajit Pawar died in a plane crash in Pune's Baramati on Wednesday morning. The funeral will take place on Thursday morning at 11 am.

As the Funeral has now been postponed, reports say that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah will attend his funeral. Other senior leaders from the country are expected to attend the event too.

Ajit Pawar's uncle and NCP founder, Sharad Pawar, along with his wife Pratibha, have left for Baramati from Mumbai.

Ajit Pawar's cousin and NCP-SP MP, Supriya Sule, along with his wife Sunetra, have left from Delhi. They were in the national capital to attend the Budget session of the Parliament.

Visuals of Yugendra Pawar, Ajit Pawar’s nephew, crying inconsolably have surfaced on social media.

Ajit Pawar was the longest-serving Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra non-consecutively. He served in the position for six terms within various governments. He had worked as deputy chief minister in the cabinets of Prithviraj Chavan, Devendra Fadnavis, Uddhav Thackeray and Eknath Shinde.

He is married to Sunetra Pawar, with whom he has two sons, Jay and Parth Pawar.

In 1982, Ajit Pawar began his political career after being elected to the board of a cooperative sugar factory. In 1991, he was elected as the chairman of the Pune District Central Cooperative Bank.

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.