Pankaja Munde, Maharashtra minister and daughter of BJP leader late Gopinath Munde, is set to lose from her home turf of Parli constituency in Beed district on Thursday to her cousin and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Dhananjay Munde as the vote gap between the two widened to 30,000 votes, according to the Election Commission website. Official results are yet to be announced.
Munde, who was serving as the rural development and women and child development minister in the Devendra Fadnavis government was seen as BJP’s Other Backward Class face and heir to her father’s political legacy. Accepting her defeat, Munde said, “I accept my defeat and the decision of the mandate. The elections in my constituency were, however, fought maliciously. I am satisfied that I managed to win most seats in my district of Beed,” said Munde.
Just days ahead of the polls, a video clip of Dhananjay allegedly speaking deprecatingly about his cousin had gone viral after which he had said that the clip was doctored.
In 2014 elections, Munde had faced off with Dhananjay after her father’s death in June and won with a margin of over 20,000 votes.
Through the last five years and in all local polls the Munde versus Munde battle had played out with Dhananjay putting up a spirited fight. He had left the BJP to join NCP upset with his uncle Gopinath Munde’s decision to field Pankaja from home seat of Parli in 2009 elections.
{{/usCountry}}Through the last five years and in all local polls the Munde versus Munde battle had played out with Dhananjay putting up a spirited fight. He had left the BJP to join NCP upset with his uncle Gopinath Munde’s decision to field Pankaja from home seat of Parli in 2009 elections.
{{/usCountry}}“Pankaja as well as the party needs to introspect how we lost this seat that has been represented by one of our senior most leaders in the past,” said BJP leader and spokesperson Madhu Chavan.
Another sitting BJP minister who has lost the polls is Ram Shinde. Shinde lost the Karjat-Jamkhed seat, another BJP bastion, to NCP candidate and grand nephew of Sharad Pawar, Rohit Pawar.