Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Ajit Pawar died in a plane crash on Wednesday morning.
According to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), five people, including the crew, on board the chartered plane flying from Mumbai to Baramati, died after a crash-landing at 8.45 am.
Pawar was headed to Baramati to attend a public rally for the Zilla Parishad Elections. He was in Mumbai on Tuesday, where he attended a meeting of the Maharashtra Cabinet Committee on Infrastructure, chaired by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. Maharashtra Minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule and other officials were also present.
His family, including his cousin Supriya Sule, has been grief-stricken following the incident. Taking to WhatsApp, Sule put up a story with just one word, “Devastated.”
Sule, who was in Delhi along with Ajit Pawar’s wife Sunetra Pawar and son Parth Pawar to attend the Budget session of Parliament, has left for Baramati.
Visuals of Yugendra Pawar, Ajit Pawar’s nephew, crying inconsolably have surfaced on social media.
Know about Ajit Pawar
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.
