Mumbai: In a close contest, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Pankaja Munde lost from her father’s constituency of Beed, amid strong Maratha quota headwinds.
Munde, daughter of the late BJP stalwart Gopinath Munde, lost to Bajrang Sonwane of the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) by a margin of 6,553 votes in a counting match that went on late into Tuesday night, with every round throwing up a surprise. Munde belongs to the Vanjari caste under the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category, while Sonwane is a Maratha.
This election was especially important for Munde, whose political career has been in a slump since she lost the 2019 state assembly polls, with several reports of her being snubbed by her party.
This time, while the BJP gave her a ticket from the seat that her father had once held, it came at the cost of Munde having to replace her younger sister, Pritam Munde, a two-term incumbent from the Beed constituency.
Speaking to ThePrint in May, Munde, ahead of the polls, accepted that there were challenges due to a possible consolidation of Maratha votes but said she was “desperate to win” the election.
Beed falls under the Marathwada region, which has a dominant Maratha population. The Marathas have been demanding a quota in government jobs and education since the 1980s. The agitation picked up steam last year when Maratha activist Manoj Jarange Patil, who lives in Jalna but hails from Beed, started demanding that Marathas be granted reservation as Kunbis, claiming that all Marathas originally belonged to the agrarian Kunbi clan. The Kunbis are covered under the OBC quota.
Jarange Patil’s demands have angered a section of the state’s OBC population.
Other than her father’s goodwill in Beed, Munde’s campaign revolved around explaining to people that the Maratha agitation was not an issue for the Lok Sabha poll, but one that could be solved in the state assembly. She also reiterated her commitment to a stand-alone Maratha quota in her speeches.
She, however, felt the pressures of the quota agitation with some Marathas greeting her with black flags at some of the campaign rallies.
This time, however, Munde had the support of her cousin, Dhananjay Munde, who, as part of the undivided NCP, triumphed over her in the 2019 state polls from the Parli constituency. Dhananjay Munde walked out of the BJP in 2013 to join the NCP after his uncle, Gopinath Munde, allegedly overlooked him to pass on his legacy to his daughter, Pankaja.
In July 2023, Dhananjay Munde followed Ajit Pawar in his rebellion against uncle Sharad Pawar and is currently a minister in Maharashtra’s ruling combine of the BJP, Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena and the Ajit Pawar-led NCP. Dhananjay Munde addressed several campaign rallies for Pankaja Munde this time.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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