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Correspondent

23 August 2024 at 4:29:04 pm

Exit that shocked the nation

Deputy CM Ajit Pawar, four others killed in plane crash; Probe begins into the reasons for the crash Mumbai: Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar and four other persons on board an aircraft were killed after it crashed near the Baramati airport in Pune district on Wednesday. Pawar had taken off from Mumbai in the morning to address four rallies in the day in Pune district for the February 5 zilla parishad elections. The others killed in the tragedy were Captain Sumit Kapoor, who had a...

Exit that shocked the nation

Deputy CM Ajit Pawar, four others killed in plane crash; Probe begins into the reasons for the crash Mumbai: Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar and four other persons on board an aircraft were killed after it crashed near the Baramati airport in Pune district on Wednesday. Pawar had taken off from Mumbai in the morning to address four rallies in the day in Pune district for the February 5 zilla parishad elections. The others killed in the tragedy were Captain Sumit Kapoor, who had a flying experience of 15,000 hours, co-pilot Capt. Shambhavi Pathak with 1,500 hours of flying, Personal Security Officer (PSO) Vidip Jadhav and flight attendant Pinky Mali. The government released a statement detailing the sequence of events that led to the crash and Pawar's death. The aircraft, a Learjet, was cleared for landing in Baramati on Wednesday morning after a go-around due to poor visibility, but having finally received a clearance it did not give any read-back' to the ATC, and moments later burst into flames on the edge of the runway. In aviation parlance, a go-around is a standard procedure where a pilot discontinues a landing attempt and initiates a climb to fly another approach. It is used when a landing cannot be completed safely due to factors like poor weather, an unstable approach, or traffic on the runway. It is a proactive safety measure rather than an emergency. In aviation, a readback is a crucial safety procedure where a pilot repeats back the essential parts of a message or instruction received from Air Traffic Control (ATC). It acts as a "closed-loop" communication system, ensuring that the controller's instructions were heard and understood correctly by the flight crew. The aircraft was trying to land amid poor visibility, Civil Aviation Minister K Rammohan Naidu told reporters in Pune. The statement by his ministry recounted the final minutes of the ill-fated Learjet 45 belonging to VSR Ventures Pvt Ltd that crashed, leading to the death of all five persons on board, including Pawar. Fatal Flight The ill-fated aircraft was a Bombardier Learjet 45, a twin-engine business jet commonly used for corporate and charter travel. Designed to carry between six and nine passengers, the Learjet 45 has a range of approximately 2,000 nautical miles and is powered by twin turbofan engines. The aircraft involved in the crash belonged to a charter operator and was being used for a non-scheduled private flight.According to preliminary information from aviation authorities and Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) sources, the aircraft encountered severe weather conditions while approaching Baramati. Dense fog enveloped the Pune–Baramati region at the time, drastically reducing visibility and complicating the landing procedure. Probe Begins A team from the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) has reached the Baramati crash site to launch a forensic probe into the VSR Venture's Learjet 45 aircraft accident. "The investigation team has reached the (crash) site. They are on the work," the AAIB official told PTI. The official, however, declined to share further details. Earlier in the day, AAIB, which has the mandate to investigate all accidents and serious incidents/incidents involving aircraft with a gross weight of 2,250 kg or turbojet aircraft, was handed the probe into the crash. The aircraft, bearing registration VT-SSK, was being operated by the Delhi-based non-scheduled operator VSR Ventures Pvt Ltd. The crew was advised to descend in visual meteorological conditions at the pilot's discretion, the Civil Aviation Ministry said in its statement. At that time, the winds were calm, and visibility was around 3,000 metres, it said. Baramati airfield does not have an instrumental landing system - a precision radio navigation system that provides short-range guidance to an aircraft, allowing it to approach a runway at night, during bad weather and poor visibility. Ajit Pawar's last rites will be held with full state honours on Thursday in Baramati. Union Home Minister Amit Shah is expected to attend the funeral, which will be held at Vidya Pratishthan ground at 11 am. The Maharashtra government on Wednesday declared three days of state mourning across state till January 30 as a mark of respect to Ajit Pawar. The national flag will be flown at half-mast on all buildings where it is flown regularly. There will be no official entertainment during the mourning period. “Ajit's death was a big shock for Maharashtra, which has lost a hardworking and efficient leader. This loss is irreparable. Not all things are in our hands. A stand was floated from Kolkata that there is some politics involved in this incident. But there is nothing like this. There is no politics in it. It was an accident. I request not to bring politics into it.” Sharad Pawar, President, NCP (SP)

Fraying Stitch

West Bengal’s Chief Minister built her rule on minority consolidation. Ahead of a hotly-contested Assembly poll, the seams are coming apart.

West Bengal
West Bengal

For more than a decade Mamata Banerjee has ruled West Bengal by mastering a simple political arithmetic: consolidate Muslim voters, scatter the opposition and frame every election as a ‘civilisational’ stand-off with the Bharatiya Janata Party. That formula delivered landslides in 2016 and 2021 and turned the Trinamool Congress (TMC) into the state’s natural party of power. But ahead of the coming Assembly elections, that arithmetic is beginning to wobble. The emergence of Muslim-led outfits exploring a united front speaks volumes about what Mamata Banerjee has reduced Bengal’s politics to.


Humayun Kabir, a suspended TMC MLA and the man behind the construction of a Babri Masjid replica along a national highway in Murshidabad, has floated a new party, the Janata Unnayan Party, and is openly urging Muslims to break with the TMC. He has found common cause with Naushad Siddiqui’s Indian Secular Front (ISF), rooted in the influential Furfura Sharif shrine, which has called for an alliance against both the TMC and the BJP. Talks are reportedly under way with smaller outfits, including the SDPI, the political wing of the banned Popular Front of India.


For years Mamata Banerjee positioned herself as the sole credible guardian of Muslim interests. Welfare schemes, symbolic gestures and a relentless anti-BJP rhetoric cemented her image as a bulwark against majoritarian politics. Muslims, roughly 27 per cent of Bengal’s population, rewarded her handsomely in districts where they form decisive blocs. In Malda, the TMC’s vote share jumped from single digits in 2011 to a majority a decade later. In Murshidabad, it rose even more dramatically. Together, these districts became pillars of Trinamool dominance.


Yet it is precisely in these belts that the TMC now looks most exposed. Many seats were won in 2021 by margins slim enough to be overturned by a modest 5–7 percentage-point split in the minority vote. A fractured Muslim electorate would not hand power to the BJP overnight, but it could turn comfortable victories into knife-edge contests and complicate Mamata Banerjee’s path to a fourth term.


The deeper story is not electoral mathematics but political exhaustion. The churn among Muslim voters has been fuelled by a growing sense that the TMC’s minority politics has curdled into tokenism. The controversy over the removal and reclassification of OBC groups, amendments to the Waqf law, and the state’s habit of reactive governance have created unease.


Mamata Banerjee’s style of rule has aggravated the problem. Power in Bengal has been personalised to an extreme, dissent criminalised and local strongmen indulged so long as they deliver votes. This has produced a politics where identity entrepreneurs thrive.


Meanwhile the BJP’s leadership has intensified organisational efforts, drafted ‘Prabasi’ leaders from across India and scheduled high-profile visits by national figures. Yet the BJP’s challenge in Bengal remains structural as its appeal still polarises more than it persuades. Mamata Banerjee continues to exploit fears over citizenship laws, migrant detentions and electoral roll revisions to rally minorities behind her.


That is precisely the tragedy of Bengal’s politics. After 14 years of Trinamool rule, the state is poorer in ideas and thinner in institutions. What should have been a decade of renewal after Left Front stagnation has yielded instead a brittle regime dependent on fear. The rise of Muslim-led outfits is not a sign of healthy pluralism but a sign that politics has been reduced to identity bargaining in a vacuum of governance.


Whether or not Banerjee is dethroned this time, she certainly is being challenged in a big way for the first time since 2011 -and that too from within the very constituency that sustained her rise. That alone is an indictment. Bengal, once a crucible of ideas, now offers a narrower spectacle of a ruling party that mistook crude consolidation for consent. It is discovering that loyalty purchased through polarisation rarely endures.

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