The Munde sisters’ playbook: Loud, clear dissonance

Pankaja Munde is known for her outspokenness. Her sister Pritam spoke in support of the protesting wrestlers, breaking the BJP’s unwritten code of silence

Pritam Gopinath Munde, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) member of Parliament from Beed, recently spoke out in support of the women wrestlers who have accused Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) Brijbhushan Sharan Singh of sexual harassment. On June 1, her sister Pankaja, a former Maharashtra minister and the national secretary of BJP, said at an event in New Delhi: “I belong to the BJP but the BJP doesn’t belong to me.” It was the same day that Pritam lamented that the government had not yet reached out to the protesting wrestlers. “Even though I am a part of this government, one has to accept that the way we should have communicated with the wrestlers has not happened,” Pritam said, addressing journalists in her hometown in Beed in central Maharashtra.

Pritam Munde and Pankaja Munde have taken a notable stance regarding the wrestlers' protests (HT File)

Pritam’s remarks came after the wrestlers were detained by the Delhi police after they marched from Jantar Mantar – the site of their protest — to the Parliament, as it was being inaugurated on May 28. Their detention grabbed headlines around the world, and prompted international sporting bodies to issue statements of support.

On June 3, at an event to mark the death anniversary of her father and former state deputy chief minister Gopinath Munde in Beed, Pankaja said she would take her grievances to the party leadership.

Incidentally, the Union home minister Amit Shah met a delegation of the agitating wrestlers later that evening.

Soon after BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis was made chief minister following the party’s victory in the 2014 assembly elections, Pankaja publicly said that she had no complaints and she considered herself to be the chief minister of people’s minds. Many believe that to be the beginning of her rivalry with Fadnavis, who shared an uneasy relationship with other senior members of the party in the state.

Pankaja, was given a ministerial post in Fadnavis’s government, but she lost the 2019 assembly elections to cousin, Dhananjay Munde, who contested on a Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) ticket.

Pankaja didn’t hold back from blaming her detractors within the party for her defeat. When the party did not nominate her to the state legislative council as she had expected, she periodically made her unhappiness public knowledge.

When she was not given a seat in the government after Eknath Shinde and Devendra Fadnavis joined hands in June 2022, Pankaja said: “Maybe I was not qualified enough to be made a minister. There could be more qualified people than me.” Later, speaking at a function on the occasion of prime minister Narendra Modi’s birthday on September 17 at Ambejogai in Beed, she said: “If I live in the heart and mind of people, nobody can finish me politically… PM Narendra Modi wants to end the dynasty rule prevalent in the Congress. Even I come from a political family. But if I live in people’s minds, even Modi cannot finish my political career.”

Later she clarified on Twitter: “My speech was part of various events organised to celebrate the birthday of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. There is only one line about PM Modi. When people find time from ‘sensationalisation’, they should to see the full video of my speech.”

By contrast, Pritam has not been as outspoken as her older sister – her remarks about the protesting wrestlers is the first time that the 40-year-old has expressed an opinion over an ongoing affair that impacts the party — something that the top leadership frowns upon.

Pankaja and Pritam — both daughters of the leader credited with extending the BJP’s support in Maharashtra beyond its traditional support base of upper caste and mercantile communities — speak out, sometimes even at the cost of embarrassing the party. But theirs is not just a tantrum.

Neither sister is part of any of the governments, either in the state or in the Centre. Both were overlooked — Pritam, for instance, was expecting a ministerial berth when the PM expanded his cabinet on July 7, 2021. Instead, Bhagwat Karad, a Rajya Sabha member and an associate of their father, Gopinath Munde, who comes from the same region and community as the Mundes, was picked.

Yet, Pankaja has a sizable following among the Other Backward Classes, especially in central Maharashtra, and Pritam is a two-time Parliamentarian from here. The Munde sisters saw Karad’s induction as an attempt to install a parallel leadership to cut them to size.

Now, with a year to go before the Lok Sabha elections are held, and at a time when the three-party opposition Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) is gearing up to challenge the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance, the Munde sisters have started to make their presence felt.

Significantly, none of the top state leaders of the BJP attended the function organised by the Munde sisters to mark the ninth death anniversary of their father at Gopinath Gad, a memorial in Beed, on June 3.

In a state with a sizeable and influential OBC population, the BJP will no doubt need its support to retain power. However, some leaders are of the opinion that Pankaja is not a pan-Maharashtra leader of the same mould as her father, who had taken it upon himself to mobilise the communities.

Meanwhile, the sisters — and particularly Pankaja, who has been in politics for 14 years, and was groomed by her father — are playing it as they know. Loud and clear.

“I am not responsible for the confusion that is being created about me. I consider Amit Shah as my leader and will speak freely with him,” Pankaja said at the memorial meeting, when she announced that she would soon seek an audience with Union home minister Amit Shah to air her grievances.

“Whatever I do, I will do it openly. I will air my grievances in front of my leaders. I will ask them what they have in mind for me. My people will have to know about it. If I want to take any stand after that, I will do it from a public platform,” she said.