Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) MP (Sharad Pawar) Supriya Sule and Rajya Sabha MP Sunetra Pawar, wife of Ajit Pawar, broke down in tears as they met other family members following the tragic death of the Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister in a plane crash.
A video shared on ANI’s Twitter handle (now X) showed Supriya Sule and Sunetra Pawar meeting other family members after their arrival in Baramati from the capital and were overcome with emotion. Sharad Pawar is currently traveling to Baramati, according to reports.
Ajit Pawar and four others, including the pilots and an air hostess, were killed after their chartered plane, which was trying to land, crashed at the Baramati airport. Also read | Ajit Pawar dies in plane crash: The rebel ‘dada’ at the center of recent political storms in Maharashtra is no more
The incident took place when the Deputy CM was on his way to Baramati from Mumbai on Wednesday morning to address four rallies for the February 5 zilla Faraad elections.
After the news of Ajit Pawar’s death, Supriya Sule expressed her feelings in a WhatsApp status in one word – ‘devastated’.
Ajit Pawar, 66, was the nephew of veteran politician and NCP founder Sharad Pawar and cousin of Lok Sabha MP Supriya Sule. He is survived by his wife Sunetra, a Rajya Sabha member, and two sons, Parth and Jay.
He was the longest-serving Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra in non-consecutive terms, holding the post six times under different governments. He served in the cabinets led by Prithviraj Chavan, Devendra Fadnavis, Uddhav Thackeray and Eknath Shinde.
Reacting to Ajit Pawar’s death, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was a people’s leader with a strong connection at the grassroots level and his death in the plane crash was untimely and very shocking.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis described the tragic death of Ajit Pawar as unbelievable and said he had lost a good friend.
Ajit Pawar traveled to Baramati from Mumbai to address public meetings to campaign for the zilla Faraad elections in the state on February 5. According to Flight Radar, the flight took off from Mumbai at 8:10 am and disappeared from radar around 8:45 am. The plane crashed at 8:50 a.m., a police official said.
Superintendent of Police Sandip Singh Gill said a fire broke out after the accident. “The people on board were immediately taken to hospital,” he said.
