Pankaja Munde is not contesting the assembly elections this year. However, she has been campaigning for other candidates nominated by the party. In her own words, she has been travelling across the state trying to mend ways between the Maratha and the OBC communities. The communities are on loggerheads after the Manoj Jarange-Patil’s Maratha quota stir that wanted Marathas to be identified as OBCs. She belongs to prominent OBC caste Vanjari and hence it is believed that she had been trying to consolidate the OBC vote for her party candidates.
Born on July 26, 1979, in Parli Vaijnath to Pradnya and Gopianth Munde, a senior BJP leader and former Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Pankaja completed her schooling at Shri Saraswati Vidyalaya in Parli and later attended Jai Hind College in Mumbai. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from Ramnarain Ruia College in 1999. She also has a management degree and is married to Amit Palwe, an IT professional. The couple have a son named Aryaman.
Pankja had been in headlines for all the wrong reasons over the past decade. It began even before the 2014 assembly election after the accidental demise of her father, who was then a union minister. Just ahead of the assembly polls she called herself the ‘CM in people’s minds’. It was considered to be the expression of her innate desire to rule the state and an expression related to the power struggle in the party.
After the election, she became minister of Rural Development, Women and Child Development, and Earthquake Rehabilitation departments. However, the ‘CM in people’s minds’ tag followed her. She used to speak about it too often. Unfortunately she also received the tag of the first minister of Devendra Fadnavis cabinet whose corruption was exposed. Though there was no immediate political loss to her, the corruption charges that came to be known as ‘Chikki Scam’ stuck to her name for a long time. To add to this insult, she had to bare the injury of losing assembly election in 2019. She wanted herself to be politically rehabilitated immediately. However, that too didn’t happen quickly.
In 2020 she was appointed as the National Secretary of the BJP. However, she kept sulking and lost the chance to take part in strengthening the party’s organizational structure and expanding its reach at the grassroots level.
espite facing challenges and controversies, Pankaja has remained steadfast in her commitment to public service. In the mean time she has mended ways with family members, especially estranged cousin Dhananjay Munde, for whom she even campaign in this election. It’ll be interesting to see how her political career takes turns in the future.
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