Pankaja Munde Not Included In BJP List For Maharashtra Upper House Polls

The BJP on Wednesday declared five candidates for the upcoming polls to 10 seats of the Maharashtra Legislative Council, but the name of former minister Pankaja Munde, daughter of BJP stalwart the late Gopinath Munde, did not figure in the list.

Earlier, there were speculations that the party may nominate Pankaja Munde, who had lost to her cousin Dhananjay Munde of NCP in the 2019 state Assembly polls.

The BJP's list bears the stamp of former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis as the party has chosen Shrikant Bharatiya, the then Officer on Special Duty(OSD) to Devendra Fadnavis when he was the chief minister, and Maharashtra BJP's women wing president Uma Khapre, who was once close to the Gopinath Munde faction in the BJP.

BJP's allies Sadabhau Khot and Vinayak Mete too were not renominated.

The election for ten seats will be held on June 20.

As per a release issued by the BJP, it has chosen leader of opposition in the council Pravin Darekar, Ram Shankar Shinde and Prasad Lad, besides Shrikant Bhartiya and Uma Khapre.

Maharashtra BJP chief Chandrakant Patil said he and Devendra Fadnavis tried for Pankaja Munde's candidature but "it seems that the central leadership has some other plans for her".

In politics, the disappointment of any leader with his party is transitory, he added.

The retiring members include Legislative Council chairman Ramraje Naik Nimbalkar, state Industries Minister Subhash Desai, Diwakar Raote , Pravin Darekar, Prasad Lad, Maratha leader Vinayak Mete and former minister Sadabhau Khot, Surjitsinh Thakur, Ravindra Phatak, and Sanjay Daund.

Of the 10 members, Ramraje Naik Nimbalkar and Sanjay Daund belong to the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) while Pravin Darekar, Surjitsinh Thakur, and Prasad Lad are from BJP. Diwakar Raote, Subhash Desai, and Ravindra Phatak are from the Shiv Sena.

Members of the state Legislative Assembly constitute the electoral college for the MLC polls.

The BJP has 106 MLAs in the 288-member Assembly. It has the strength to comfortably get four of its members elected to the Upper House of the Legislature.

Politically, for Pankaja Munde, who had vowed to give her best if BJP nominates her to the upper house, the denial of nomination is viewed as a snub.

"Whenever such elections are announced, my name is always there in the race. My supporters genuinely feel that I should become an MLC," Pankaja Munde had said last month when her name was doing the rounds for MLC nomination.

Devendra Fadnavis had said that Pankaja Munde is a senior leader who has the support of the state BJP for the MLC nomination. She is capable of every post, he had said. Chandrakant Patil on Wednesday said Pankaja Munde currently holds the post of BJP national secretary.

"If her name is not in this list it means the BJP's senior leadership must be having some other role for her in their mind," he said.

There has been no comment so far from the Pankaja Munde camp over the development.

Pankaja Munde came into politics when her father Gopinath Munde decided to contest the Lok Sabha election in 2009. Instead of giving the Parli assembly seat to his nephew Dhananjay, Gopinath Munde chose Pankaja Munde as the candidate.

She not only won the Parli seat from the Beed district but was later made the Maharashtra head of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) in 2012.

She won the 2014 assembly elections and was inducted as the women and child development minister in the Devendra Fadnavis cabinet.

However, her comments that she is the chief minister in the minds of people in Maharashtra made her political life difficult during the 2014-19 tenure of the Devendra Fadnavis-led government.

She did face allegations of buying nutritional food for children in state-run schools at inflated rates but was given a clean chit later by Devendra Fadnavis.

In another setback, the water conservation department headed by her was allotted to Ram Shinde when she was abroad.

She expressed her disappointment on Twitter, saying she would not attend a world seminar on water conservation as she no longer holds the portfolio.

However, Devendra Fadnavis ensured that she attended the seminar but she became marginalised later.

After her defeat in the 2019 assembly election, Pankaja Munde expressed her disappointment and was speculated to join Shiv Sena.

She had gone public and said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union minister Amit Shah are her leaders.

Speaking to reporters, Chandrakant Patil admitted that some supporters of Pankaja Munde have been disappointed.

"It is natural that some people are disappointed with her name missing from the list. But all the names have been finalised by the national committee of our party. Devendra Fadnavis and I personally tried for her candidature but it seems central leadership has some other plans for her", he said.

Chandrakant Patil said Pankaja Munde is the national secretary of BJP and the co-incharge of Madhya Pradesh.

"(In politics) Disappointment is like a vacuum created in water if you lift a ship. It gets filled immediately. Similarly, any disappointment against the party will last for a short period," he said.

When asked about the names of Sadabhau Khot and Vinayak Mete also not figuring in the list, Chandrakant Patil said, "there is no full stop in politics. There is a comma and after that, the sentence continues. We have also given the minister of state's post to Sadabhau." He said BJP chief whip Ashish Shelar had visited Maharashtra Navnirman Sena(MNS) chief Raj Thackeray at the latter's residence to seek his support in the June 10 Rajya Sabha and MLC polls.

"The MNS has one vote (in Assembly) and we are hopeful of their support," he added.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)