Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar and four others were killed after their aircraft crashed in Baramati on January 28, 2026. Here are 11 other prominent Indians who died in air crashes.
Vijay Rupani was among 242 persons on board a London-bound Air India flight that crashed into a building of a medical college and hostel in the Meghaninagar area moments after taking off from the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport on Thursday afternoon.
Residents of Ahmedabad recall the Air India crash of June 2025 after news of the Baramati plane crash involving Maharashtra Deputy CM Ajit Pawar. The earlier tragedy, which killed hundreds, remains a painful memory for those who witnessed it and lost loved ones.
Thousands of people gathered along the entire route of the funeral procession to give a poignant send-off to the late BJP leader at his hometown, where his mortal remains were flown from Ahmedabad four days after the tragedy.
"Vijay Rupani was going to London by the Air India flight," said senior state BJP leader Bhupendrasinh Chudasama.
Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel met the family members of Rupani and informed them about the DNA match, state Health Minister Rushikesh Patel said.
Former Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani, who died in a tragic plane crash in Ahmedabad on Thursday, joined the list of several top Indian politicians and prominent personalities who lost their lives in aviation accidents.
'If the BJP seriously addresses employment, examination integrity and systemic corruption, they might salvage their position. Otherwise, they are heading toward serious trouble in 2027.'
'The BJP's top leadership realised that their cadres are not happy with them, so they changed the ministers and got in new faces.'
Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel reshuffled his cabinet, inducting 19 new ministers and elevating Harsh Sanghavi to Deputy Chief Minister. The swearing-in ceremony took place on Friday, with several existing ministers continuing in their roles.
'He is a man of action and goes to the ground and solves the problem.' 'Be it the Air India crash of Ahmedabad, Morbi bridge collapse, Deesa blast or Gambhira bridge collapse, he is on the spot.'
Though the party has made no announcement, former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, the deputy chief minister in the outgoing government, is being seen as the frontrunner for the key position.
At Ahmedabad's Civil Hospital, DNA samples from over 190 relatives are being matched with victims of the Air India crash, a process expected to take up to 72 hours.
An official expressed hope that the DNA profiling all the victims will be completed by either Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning.
Captain Sumeet Sabharwal's 88-year-old father is consoled by well wishers. Captain Sabharwal was the flight commander on the Air India plane that crashed in Ahmedabad on Thursday afternoon.
A government employee in Kerala has been suspended for making an offensive comment on Facebook about a Keralite nurse who died in the Ahmedabad plane crash.
Talking to reporters after a meeting of the state cabinet, he said Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel and the entire cabinet offered tributes to those who had lost their lives in the June 12 plane crash in Ahmedabad during the meet.
At least 265 bodies were sent to the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital for post-mortem after the crash on Thursday. Of these, only six victims were identified as their faces were intact, inspector Chirag Gosai said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday met those injured in the Air India plane crash at the civil hospital in Ahmedabad.
'70-80 per cent of the operations are carried out by the SDRF...We also aim to secure the area to make sure that further damage does not take place'
Vishwas Kumar Ramesh, the sole survivor of Air India's AI 171 crash, said he still cannot believe how he miraculously survived the accident of the ill-fated London-bound flight in which 265 people lost their lives.
Addressing close to 700 employees and the leadership team across the Air India headquarters and Air India Training Academy in Gurugram, Chandrasekaran urged them to stay on course, terming the accident the most "heartbreaking" crisis of his career.
The Ahmedabad air tragedy, which claimed the lives of all but one of the 242 passengers and crew on board, and several others on the ground, has left deep scars on BJMC's residential quarters and the psyche of the survivors.
The DGCA directive called for a series of specific checks before each flight's departure from India, including inspection of fuel parameter monitoring systems, cabin air compressors, and electronic engine control units.
The ministry of civil aviation clarified that, contrary to circulating reports, a video recorder that had been recovered at the crash site was not the DFDR.
An Air India aircraft with 242 passengers on board heading to London crashed in the Meghaninagar area near Ahmedabad airport on Thursday afternoon, the police said.
Former Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani and ex-deputy CM Nitin Patel, both senior leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), on Wednesday night announced they will not fight the next month's assembly elections.
BJP leader Sudhir Mungantiwar said the Mahayuti partners will meet Governor C P Radhakrishnan to stake a claim to form a government in the state.
Legislative assembly elections in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state are due next year.
Some observers also point to the way he handled the second wave of COVID-19 pandemic and economic and social distress that followed it, even suggesting that it may have contributed to his downfall.
Vijay Rupani, the fourth chief minister to demit office in BJP-ruled states during the coronavirus pandemic, was sworn in as chief minister -- his second stint as CM -- in December 2017.
On Sunday, Rupani, 64, fainted on stage while addressing a rally in Vadodara for the upcoming civic polls in the state, following which he was flown to Ahmedabad and admitted to the U N Mehta Hospital.
State agriculture minister R C Faldu and Union minister Purshottam Rupala's names are also being considered a front-runners.
Devendra Fadnavis will lead the new Mahayuti coalition government in Maharashtra, with Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar serving as deputy chief ministers. The swearing-in ceremony is scheduled for Thursday evening at Azad Maidan ground in south Mumbai and will be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and several Union ministers. The Mahayuti coalition won the recent assembly elections by a landslide, securing 230 out of 288 seats.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to attend the swearing-in ceremony of the new Mahayuti government in Maharashtra on December 5. BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis is considered the frontrunner for the chief minister's post, with the BJP having recorded its best-ever electoral performance in the state. The Mahayuti coalition includes Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena and Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party.
Devendra Fadnavis, who is set to become the chief minister of Maharashtra for a third time, was a sensitive, polite and helpful student who never boasted about his family's political background, recalls one of his school teachers. Savitri Subramanium, who was Fadnavis' teacher in Saraswati Vidyalaya from Class 8 to 10, says he was an average student but studied well. She remembers him as a polite and simple student who never boasted about his family's political background even though his father Gangadharrao Fadnavis was an MLC at the time. Subramanium said she never thought that Fadnavis would become a good orator as he never came on stage or performed on stage during the school days. She added that he may have inculcated these qualities during his participation in Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) as a student activist.
Governor Acharya Devvrat administered the oath to 10 cabinet ministers and 14 ministers of state, including five ministers of state with independent charge.
The reset button that the Bharatiya Janata Party has pressed on governance in the wake of the Covid-19 wave, which also saw a major overhaul by Prime Minister Narendra Modi of his own Cabinet, continues as Vijay Rupani on Saturday became the fourth chief minister from the party to go.
The MLA from the Khadia-Jamalpur seat of Ahmedabad will be admitted to a designated COVID-19 hospital soon, he said.
Earlier this month, government sources said Indian and US officials were engaged in talks to finalise the dates for Trump's visit to India. "Both sides are in discussions to finalise the dates," a source said. Trump's two-day visit to India could take place on February 24-26.
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