The deputy chief minister of India’s wealthiest state of Maharashtra, Ajit Pawar, was killed on Wednesday, along with four people on board his charter aircraft that went down in flames, the aviation regulator said.
Pawar, who hailed from a top political family, was en route to his home region to canvass in local body elections, media said.
Two of his staff and two crew were also aboard the aircraft, the directorate general of civil aviation said.
“No person on board has survived,” it added in an initial statement.
Pawar backed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party in the state government, leading a faction that split in 2023 from the opposition Nationalist Congress Party.
Video showed billows of smoke rising from some of the burning wreckage of the plane, scattered across an open field.
Media said Pawar’s aircraft, travelling from the financial capital of Mumbai, tried to make an emergency landing in the family stronghold of Baramati, 250 km away, where he was set to canvass in the elections.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a post on X, expressed sympathy with the families of the deceased.
“Saddened by the tragic air crash in Baramati, Maharashtra. My thoughts are with all those who lost their loved ones in the crash,” he said.
“Praying for strength and courage for the bereaved families in this moment of profound grief,” the indian prime minister added.
The incident comes a week after an Indian Air Force (IAF) training aircraft crashed in India’s northern Uttar Pradesh state, with both pilots emerging unharmed.
In July 2025, more than 200 people were killed when an Air India plane bound for London with 242 people on board crashed shortly after takeoff, in what was said to be the world’s worst aviation disaster in a decade.
Only one person was known to have survived, as the plane came down in a residential area, crashing onto a medical college hostel.
