Bharatiya Janata Party MLC Pankaja Munde has once again ruined the party by making a statement against the ‘Batenge to Katenge’ slogan used by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in Maharashtra. Prior to this, NCP chief Ajit Pawar, part of the Mahayuti alliance, had also expressed his disagreement with Bantenge’s speech to Katenge. In an interview given to Indian Express, Pankaja said that to be honest, my politics are different. I will not support him just because I belong to the same party. I think we should just work on development. The job of a leader is to make every person who lives on this earth his own. Therefore, we should not raise any such issue in Maharashtra. Due to his statements, Pankaja had to live in political exile for a long time. All is not well with Pankaja and Pritam, the two daughters of late Gopinath Munde of Maharashtra. However, considering the influence of the Munde family on the backward castes, especially the Vanjara community, the BJP has definitely made Pankaja an MLC.
1-Is this embarrassing for the BJP?
To soften his point, Pankaja Munde says that Yogi Adityanath had said this in a different context and in the political situation of Uttar Pradesh. It does not have the same meaning that we use in Maharashtra. He also praises Prime Minister Modi. Munde says Modiji has done justice to everyone. They have not taken caste or religion into account while providing rations, shelter or cylinders. However, he forgets that Prime Minister Modi himself also
The motto “If we are one, then we are safe” has been given. Apparently this is a form of Batenge to Katenge. The opposition also says the same. There is an uproar in the party over Munde’s statement because NCP leader Ajit Pawar had also recently said that sloganeering politics like ‘Batenge to Katenge’ will not work in Maharashtra. He says: I have said many times that this will not work in Maharashtra. This could happen in UP, Jharkhand or other places. The thing is that when allies and people in the party start opposing a particular slogan, it means that either there is no consensus in the party and that all is not well in the alliance. For a disciplined party like the BJP, that really means it. This is embarrassing.
2-Who did Munde target after losing the Lok Sabha elections?
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Pankaja Munde, while speaking to reporters a few days after her defeat in the Lok Sabha elections, had said that if she had won, she would have been considered a hero, but some people don’t care. taste. Speaking to reporters in Maharashtra’s Latur district, the BJP national secretary said her supporters are worried about their uncertain future. In fact, Pankaja Munde lost the Beed seat in the Lok Sabha elections to Bajrang Sonawane of the Nationalist Congress Party (SP) by a slim margin of 6,553 votes. The BJP leader got 6.7 lakh votes. Munde said that after losing the 2019 elections, he had to face five years of exile and after the recent defeat, his followers are not able to understand what is their future? He said that I did not participate in the elections because I did not know that I would participate in the elections until the party announced my candidacy.
Actually, the party had given ticket to Pankaja Munde from Beed, where her sister Pritam was winning the elections twice in a row. It was really difficult for Pankaja to suddenly cut his sister’s ticket and participate in the elections on his own. another option was not.
3- Even before, Pankaja’s pain regarding the BJP has been emerging.
Former Maharashtra minister and Bharatiya Janata Party national secretary Pankaja Munde had once said that she belonged to the BJP. But the BJP is not his party. Pankaja Munde, daughter of late BJP leader Gopinath Munde, had stayed away from the headlines after her defeat in the 2019 Maharashtra Assembly elections. She was a minister in the Devendra Fadnavis government between 2014 and 2019. Only after This his stars began to fade. He even said that the BJP is a great party. But she’s not one of them. Referring to the Mahadev Janak-led Rashtriya Samaj Party, he said: I belong to the BJP. If I have any problem with my father, I will go to my brother’s house. This was in a way a threat given by him. He then expressed his anger by writing a post on Facebook and making the BJP disappear from his Twitter profile. At that time it was accepted that Pankaja Munde could leave the party. Thus, speculation continued for many years that Munde had been sidelined in the state BJP. After the Eknath Shinde-Devendra Fadnavis government’s first cabinet expansion in August 2022, Munde had said he was probably “not qualified enough to get a ministerial position”.
4-Was injustice done to Pankaja in the BJP?
The history of the last 10 years in the BJP shows that many injustices have been committed against Pankaja, daughter of late BJP leader Gopinath Munde. Her supporters believe she has been ignored in the party since the rise of the Modi-Amit Shah era. . However, due to Munde’s legacy, she is an important OBC face in the party, which the BJP cannot ignore. Pankaja had contested the recently held Lok Sabha elections, which he had fought reluctantly as he wanted to establish his dominance in state politics. I didn’t want to lose. After the BJP’s poor performance in Maharashtra, the party felt that if there is a need to improve the BJP’s position in Marathawad, then Pankaja will have to be fielded. In this sequence, the party converted it into MLC. But due to alliance in the assembly elections this time, his family’s seat, Parli, went to the NCP and made Pankaja’s cousin Dhananjay Munde its candidate. This is the same Dhananjay who defeated Pankaja in the 2019 assembly elections. Obviously, how would Pankaja feel if he asked for votes for him today? According to a news report published in Express, he said he is saddened that the BJP is not in the race for Parli. But I have appealed to party workers to campaign for ‘Ghari’ (NCP’s electoral symbol), considering him similar to ‘Lotus’.
5- Once again Pankaja remained a minister.
This time, when the BJP lost ground in Maharashtra in the Lok Sabha elections, the party again remembered the Munde family. In fact, this time the BJP could not win even one of the eight Lok Sabha seats in Marathawad. The party is considering a total of 46 constituencies in Marathawad and this will only be possible if Pankaja is given an important role. Before the BJP realized that it was losing ground due to the Maratha reservation protests and the OBC mobilization, there was talk of Narendra Modi sending. her to the Rajya Sabha. He may be included in Modi’s cabinet. Then it was also discussed that he would be included in the Maharashtra cabinet making him an MLC. In fact, the Vanjara caste occupies a decisive position in this area. Despite this, Munda became an MLC but her arrival as a minister was overshadowed. Pankaja never hid her pain at being sidelined in the state unit after the rise of Devendra Fadnavis. That pain still surfaces from time to time.
