

NEW DELHI: A private jet carrying BJP president Rajnath Singh and senior leaders Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley made an emergency landing on Monday at Delhi airport after it developed problems in its auto-pilot system.

The BJP leaders were flying to Bangalore to address an election rally there but the plane made an emergency landing nine minutes after taking off on Monday morning, sources told here.

They added that all the passengers on board the aircraft are safe and may fly to Bangalore if alternate arrangements are made.

The turbine powered Challenger jet is owned by a Mumbai-based company called Eon Aviation. It is a nine-seater plane with the call sign of VT-DBG, ATC sources said.

The pilot detected the problem in aircraft's auto-pilot system after taking off and immediately sought ATC's permission to land under emergency conditions, they said.

BJP general secretary Dharmendra Pradhan and joint general secretary (organisation) V Satish were also on board the aircraft when the incident took place.

ATC sources said the pilot took the correct action of landing the aircraft after the problem was detected.