Gopinath Munde's daughters retain family turf in Beed

Beed (Maharashtra): Daughters of the late BJP leader Gopinath Munde, Pankaja and Pritam, on Sunday won Parli Assembly and Beed Lok Sabha seats respectively, retaining their father’s political legacy.

Pankaja, Munde’s eldest daughter and sitting BJP MLA, defeated her estranged cousin Dhananjay Munde, a Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) nominee from Parli Assembly seat by 25,895 votes. She polled 96,904 against Dhananjay’s 71,009 votes.

Pritam who polled over nine lakh votes defeated former Congress minister Ashok Patil by a whopping margin of around seven lakh votes in the Lok Sabha bypoll, held on October 15 along with the Assembly polls.

Top leaders of BJP, including the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party chief Amit Shah, had addressed campaign rallies for the Munde sisters, while NCP leaders Sharad Pawar and Ajit Pawar too had campaigned for NCP nominees in the district.

Prime Minister had commenced his Assembly poll campaign from Beed, saying that had Munde been alive, there would have been no need for him (Modi) to canvass for votes.

Shiv Sena chose not to put up a candidate against Munde sisters, while NCP did not field anyone against Pritam as announced by Sharad Pawar soon after Munde’s death.

In 2009, except for Parli Assembly segment, NCP had won all other seats in Beed district.

After Munde died in a road accident in New Delhi in June, Pankaja has emerged as the new OBC face of BJP in Maharashtra.
Munde, who belonged to the Vanjari community, was considered the tallest OBC leader of the state.

With Pankaja, who undertook a statewide ‘Sangharsh Yatra’  ahead of polls, deciding to focus on Maharashtra, BJP chose to field Pritam for Beed Lok Sabha bypoll.