NAGPUR: Maharashtra industries minister Uday Samant on Thursday said the helicopter carrying him from Nagpur to Gadchiroli developed a technical snag during take-off, forcing the pilot to abort the flight.Samant said he boarded the helicopter at Nagpur between 8.30am and 8.45am to travel to Gadchiroli, news agency PTI reported.The Shiv Sena minister, who later safely disembarked, said the pilot had informed him that all maintenance work on the chopper had just been completed and that the weather conditions were suitable for flying to the eastern Maharashtra district.“However, after the helicopter’s engine started and when we took off, suddenly the pilot said there had been a malfunction in the helicopter. So we stopped back on the runway. The pilot identified the technical fault and aborted the flight. The pilot handled everything very well,” he stated.“I don’t know exactly what the technical fault was. But one doubt remains in my mind, if the maintenance (of the helicopter) had just been checked 15 minutes earlier and technically everything was fine, how did this happen all of a sudden while I was leaving for Surjagad (Gadchiroli)? That question remains,” he said.Samant later travelled to Gadchiroli, around 170km from Nagpur, by road.The incident comes nearly seven months after then-deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar died in an air crash in Baramati in Pune district.(With agency inputs)
