Aurangabad: BJP leader and Maharashtra cabinet minister Pankaja Munde Thursday accepted her defeat from Parli assembly seat at the hands of her cousin and NCP leader Dhananjay Munde.
The result of the Parli seat has not been declared yet, but Pankaja was trailing behind Dhananjay Munde by almost 30,000 votes.
“I worked for the constituency. Though I was in the government, my struggle for my constituency and people continued. I take responsibility of this defeat,” she said.
Pankaja was working as the rural development and women and child development minister in the Devendra Fadnavis government, and was seen as the successor to the political legacy of her father, the late Gopinath Munde.
Pankaja’s defeat comes after a bitterly fought battle between the two estranged cousins. One day before Maharashtra went to poll, an FIR was filed against Dhananjay for allegedly making ‘obscene’ comments about Pankaja.
In 2014, Panjaka fought against her brother and won by a margin of over 20,000 votes after the death of her father in June that year.
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