The sudden death of an influential leader has left a political vacuum in India's richest state.
Ajit Pawar, the deputy chief minister of Maharashtra, died on Wednesday in a plane crash along with four others.
Maharashtra's political landscape is notoriously complex - a web of shifting alliances, regional loyalties and rivalries. And for decades, Ajit Pawar navigated it with a mixture of pragmatism and shrewdness, swiftly rising through the ranks.
Yet, beneath the public triumphs, his journey was also deeply personal: a struggle to emerge out of the formidable shadow of his uncle Sharad Pawar - the founder of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and a dominant figure in Indian politics.
Born in 1959, Ajit Pawar entered politics in the 1980s under his uncle's mentorship, particularly focusing on the Pawar family stronghold of Baramati, a rural area in western Maharashtra where sugar cooperatives, banks and local institutions helped secure both economic influence and political loyalty.
