The shocking demise of Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, 66, in a plane crash brought the glare back on the muddled civil aviation sector that is yet to recover from last year’s Dreamliner accident that killed over 270 people in Ahmedabad. Ajit’s Learjet 45, hired from VSR Corp, took off from Mumbai around 8.10 am and disappeared from the radar about 35 minutes later while attempting to land at Baramati, his political stomping ground. After a missed approach for touchdown amid poor visibility, the flight with five persons aboard, including the crew, crashed in a ball of fire on its second attempt to land. Why the experienced pilots chose to land despite struggling to see the airstrip remains a mystery. Only a quick, transparent and thorough probe can ensure accountability and closure for the bereaved families.
This was the second major accident involving VSR’s Learjet 45; the first one was in 2023. Ajit became the seventh prominent politician to die in an air crash after Sanjay Gandhi, Madhavrao Scindia, G M C Balayogi, Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, Mohan Kumaramangalam and Vijay Rupani.
Ajit’s tragic departure leaves a huge void that is not easy to fill in the state, party and family. History will remember him as a powerful, earthy, in-your-face neta who had a strong grip over his party cadre and no filters when it came to pursuing power. He represented Baramati in the state assembly seven times since 1991, five of them on the trot. For party workers, he was their dada (brother). Known to be an efficient administrator, his run-ins with upright officers and allegations of corruption failed to dent his standing among followers and voters. Ajit revolted twice against uncle Sharad Pawar’s leadership of the Nationalist Congress Party, joined forces with the BJP, and openly spoke about his ambition to become chief minister. He also had no qualms in nudging Sharad Pawar, 85, to retire from active politics and hand over the party’s reins to him. In the end, the uncle outlived the nephew.
Ideology for him was a subservient tool. Yet, Ajit did not sacrifice his party’s Mumbai unit head Nawab Malik when the BJP demanded his purge. Of late, he was engineering a rapprochement between the two NCP factions to become its eventual head, but fate willed otherwise.