When Pankaja Munde and Dhananjay Munde shared the stage on Dussehra this year, the reunion resulted in great surprise. For years, they had traded veiled barbs against each other. Until last year, Dhananjay, who is minister for agriculture in Maharashtra, was on the opposite side of the political spectrum as an NCP man while Pankaja is a member of the legislative council from the BJP. Now, on the cusp of the Maharashtra legislative assembly elections, the warring cousins, both, claiming a right to Gopinath Munde’s political legacy, had come together despite being in different political parties, albeit in the same Mahayuti.
Gopinath Munde cut his teeth in politics as a member of the ABVP during his student days. He is believed to have met Pramod Mahajan then who was also a budding youth leader of the saffron party. The two became friends and then family as Munde married Mahajan’s younger sister. Those who have watched the duo’s rise say that Munde truly stepped out of his more charismatic brother-in-law’s shadow when he undertook the ‘Sangharsh Yatra’ in 1994-95 against Sharad Pawar’s government, making the former chief minister his target. He managed to mobilise the masses and emerged as a formidable leader of the OBC. Munde went on to become the deputy chief minister in the first Shiv Sena-BJP government in the state from 1995-1999 and won a reputation for being an effective home minister. He was appreciated for supporting the Mumbai police in launching an aggressive counter-attack against the underworld that was running riot in the city back then. In contrast, Mahajan busied himself with the top echelons of the BJP, holding fort in New Delhi as a high-profile union minister and the party’s treasurer who was also the brain behind the ‘rath yatra’. Together, they stitched and preserved the BJP’s alliance with the Sena, maintaining a warm rapport with Bal Thackeray.
The Gen-next of the families have made their mark in politics. Mahajan’s daughter Poonam won the elections to the Lok Sabha in 2014 and 2019. Munde’s older daughter Pankaja was a former minister in Maharashtra but lost the Lok Sabha elections in 2024. His younger daughter Pritam won the Parliamentary elections from Beed by a record margin after Munde passed away in 2014. She was a MP for two terms but was denied a ticket this year. Munde’s nephew, Dhananjay worked at the grassroots level for the BJP in Beed for over a decade but quit the party in 2013 to join the NCP.
He was peeved by his uncle’s decision to overlook his claim to the Parli Lok Sabha constituency seat in the elections and instead, promote his daughter Pankaja. In 2023, he supported Ajit Pawar when the NCP was split and went on to become the agriculture minister in the current Mahayuti government. The two cousins have been warring for over a decade, each trying to reclaim the legacy left behind by Munde.
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