{"id":394868,"date":"2026-01-28T11:07:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T11:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/394868\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T11:07:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T11:07:08","slug":"ajit-pawar-veteran-indian-politician-dies-in-plane-crash-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/394868\/","title":{"rendered":"Ajit Pawar: Veteran Indian politician dies in plane crash"},"content":{"rendered":"

The politician who came out of his uncle’s shadowpublished at 10:20 GMT<\/p>\n

10:20 GMT<\/p>\n

Cherylann Mollan
Reporting from Mumbai<\/p>\n

\"PlaneImage source, Getty Images<\/p>\n

For a large part of his political career, Ajit Pawar remained in his uncle Sharad Pawar’s shadow.<\/p>\n

He began his political career with the Congress party, where the senior Pawar was already a top leader at the time. <\/p>\n

When Sharad Pawar left the Congress in 1999 to form the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), Ajit followed, and rose through the party’s ranks swiftly.<\/p>\n

He has been an MP and MLA in Maharashtra and served as the state’s deputy chief minister within various governments. <\/p>\n

In 2023, Pawar split from his uncle’s party and joined the state’s BJP-led government with the backing of a large group of party members. <\/p>\n

His rebellion earned him the deputy chief minister post but divided the NCP into two factions and ended decades of political unity within his own family.<\/p>\n

Political analyst Abhay Deshpande says that in recent months, there was talk of a reunion between uncle and nephew.<\/p>\n

“Now, we’ll never see that day. But maybe his [Ajit Pawar’s] death will bring the family together again,” he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The politician who came out of his uncle’s shadowpublished at 10:20 GMT 10:20 GMT Cherylann MollanReporting from Mumbai…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394760,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-394868","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}