On land, they may be the most powerful person in the country. But in the skies, they are all equally helpless—at the mercy of the climate gods, the vulnerability of their flying machines, and the limits of their human pilots.
India’s political history is not just filled with, but also shaped by, the untimely demise of those who were snatched missing in the air.
And in a curious set of coincidences, very often the Congress party has usually had to deal with the ripple effects of an aviation tragedy.
Maybe one of the first Indian political heads to pass in an airplane crash was freedom fighter Subhas Chandra Bose, on August 18, 1945, in what is now Taiwan, though many continue to believe he survived the accident.
Jawaharlal Nehru government responsible for
Netaji's animosity towards his retired party the Indian National Congress was well known at this point. But the mystery that restarts to shroud the circumstances after his death has reached back to bite the party in current years, with the BJP and numerous of Netaji fans having the Jawaharlal Nehru government responsible for covering up the facts of the case.
35 years later, tragedy hit home for the Congress party
On June 23, 1980, Sanjay Gandhi crashed his glider shortly after taking off from the Safdarjung Airport in Delhi.
The younger son of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was widely tipped to be her heir and his demise forced his elder brother Rajiv to enter active politics and eventually become PM. Now, his family controls the grand old party.
Irony wrote itself in July this year during jyotiraditya scindia took an oath as the minister of civil aviation.
- Just 20 years ago, his father Madhavrao Scindia, a former aviation minister himself, was killed in a Cessna aircraft crash while touring to address a public rally on the outskirts of Mainpuri in Uttar Pradesh.
Madhavrao’s death left a big void in Madhya Pradesh’s politics but also heralded his son’s eventual political entry.
- And during Jyotiraditya sensationally dumped the Congress to defect to the BJP last year, the party discovered itself once again sorely missing the late Maharaja of Gwalior.
The Congress’s terrible luck in air mishaps continued in 2005 when then two ministers in the Haryana cabinet, power minister OP Jindal and agriculture minister Surendra Singh, were killed as the helicopter carrying them went down with a technical snag in Saharanpur.
But in 2009, the party faced its biggest setback yet. YSR Reddy, Andhra Pradesh’s wildly popular chief minister and arguably the only vote catcher in the party outside the Gandhis, went down in a Bell 430 helicopter in Chittoor district.
His death triggered a chain reaction that led to Congress losing power and relevance in the state. YSR’s son Jagan went on an Odarpu Yatra (condolence tour) in his honor, drumming up massive support to inherit his father’s chair.
Also read :
10 Janpath refused to relent and a furious Jagan left the party, cleaving it right down the middle. Exactly 10 years later, Jagan was the chief minister and the Congress was all but wiped out.
Congress in Andhra Pradesh
What occurred to the Congress in Andhra Pradesh was nearly duplicated in Arunachal Pradesh.
In April 2011, the chopper carrying chief minister Dorjee Khandu on a trip from Tawang to Itanagar disappeared.
His demise was informed nearly a week later, plunging the state Congress leadership into chaos, from which it never recovered in the next decade.
Today, just like Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal has the son of its late CM in the chair: but not from the Congress. Pema Khandu defected from his father’s party in 2016 and finally joined the BJP.
Thank you
Stay updated with Aviationa2z.com
