Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Jan 28: The captain of the aircraft carrying Maharashtra deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar and four others, had spoken to the Air Traffic Control (ATC) about the visible runway before going down in flames at Baramati on Wednesday and there was no SOS, or distress signal, sources said.
Two flying schools, Redbird and Carver Aviation, operated the ATC at Baramati on alternate days and Wednesday was the turn of Carver Aviation to manage the ATC. No person on board survived.
Videos from the crash site showed billows of smoke from the plane’s burning and scattered wreckage. Pawar was scheduled to address poll rallies in his family stronghold of Baramati, 250 km from Mumbai.
Pramesh Parikh, a Carver Aviation manager, said the aircraft was to land at 8.50am, and the captain said the runway was visible. “Baramati has a 1,770 metre runway. We could not see the aircraft landing. But we heard the crash. Maybe there was a visibility issue.’’ Eyewitnesses said that the pilot did a go-around, a normal procedure
Captain Sumit Kapoor and first officer Shambavi Pathak flew the Learjet 45, a mid-size business jet. Pinky Mali was the flight attendant. Pawar’s personal security officer, Vidhit Jadhav, was the fifth passenger on board.
Some eyewitness accounts said minutes before the plane crashed it was flying towards the runway and fell 100 feet before approaching it. “When the aircraft descended, it seemed it would crash and it did. It then exploded and burst into a massive fire. 4-5 more explosions followed,” the eyewitness said.
The eyewitness added that locals rushed to the spot on seeing the plane crashing and erupting into flames. “People came and tried to pull out passengers from the aircraft. Due to the huge fire, they could not help,” he said.
Anil Ambani’s Reliance Airport Developers managed Baramati airport before handing it over to Maharashtra Airport Development Company. Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation constructed the airport in 1996. It was among five airports in the state given to Reliance Airport Developers for management.
As news of Ajit Pawar’s death in the plane crash spread, a wave of mourning followed as his political colleagues, party workers and well-wishers were seen breaking into tears. While former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh was unable to issue a statement as he cried uncontrollably, his cousin and NCP(SP) leader Supriya Sule wrote in a post, “Devastated.”
Ajit Pawar, one of Maharashtra’s key power brokers, certainly after the June 2023 split from uncle Sharad Pawar’s side, was instrumental in developing Baramati, a now-prosperous sugarcane-producing belt, and was the proving ground that nurtured his political journey of over three decades.
It was here that a young Ajit Pawar, still in his uncle’s far-reaching shadow, learned the game – that of politics and power – and was moulded into the hard-nosed politician who would later play a starring role in re-shaping, perhaps for all time, Maharashtra’s political landscape. And it was here, many years later, that Pawar’s journey came to an end.
His political life was punctuated by dramatic turns. In November 2019, he briefly defected to form a surprise government with the BJP… a government that lasted just 80 hours. It was the first public crack in the NCP family.
But the rupture became permanent in July 2023, when Ajit Pawar led a faction of MLAs to join the BJP-led government again… this time as Deputy Chief Minister. The move split the NCP down the middle. Months later, the Election Commission awarded his faction the party name and symbol… leaving Sharad Pawar’s loyalists to rebuild under a new banner.
Ajit Pawar’s story was more than that of a powerful state leader. It was a mirror to India’s changing politics…where alliances shift, families fracture, and survival demands reinvention. In life and in legacy, Ajit Pawar was never out of the game.
