AJIT PAWAR, the deputy chief minister of India’s Maharashtra state, died on Wednesday after a charter aircraft carrying him crashed and caught fire, the aviation regulator said. Four other people on board were also killed.
Pawar was travelling to his home region to canvass in local body elections.
The directorate general of civil aviation said two of Pawar’s staff members and two crew were on board the VSR Ventures-operated Learjet 45.
“No person on board has survived,” the regulator said in an initial statement.
VK Singh, director of VSR Ventures, told broadcaster India Today that the aircraft crashed while approaching the city of Baramati, adding that the cause was not yet clear.
“The aircraft is 100% safe,” he said. “The crew was fairly experienced.”
Video footage showed smoke rising from burning wreckage scattered across an open field.
“At first it was on fire. After that, there were four or five more explosions,” an unidentified witness told ANI news agency. He said the flames were too intense for anyone to be rescued.
Pawar supported prime minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party in Maharashtra’s state government and led a faction that split from the opposition Nationalist Congress Party in 2023.
In a post on X, Modi said Pawar’s death was “shocking and saddening”.
Media reports said the aircraft had departed from Mumbai and attempted an emergency landing in Baramati, about 250 km away, where Pawar was scheduled to campaign in the elections.
