Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Eknath Khadse has described the recent statements of BJP national secretary and former Maharashtra minister Pankaja Munde as painful. He claimed that the BJP itself was ill-treating Pankaja. On the other hand, Congress has offered Pankaja to join its party.
Congress leader Balasaheb Thorat has also commented on Pankaja’s statement. He said that the way BJP is treating Pankaja is wrong and if Pankaja wants, she can join Congress. Khadse said this while talking to reporters at Gopinathgarh in Beed district. The NCP leader had arrived to visit the memorial of Pankaja’s father Gopinath Munde on his ninth death anniversary. During this, he said that I am feeling very uncomfortable with his statement, because there is a lot of difference between today’s BJP and the earlier party. The statements made by Pankaja Munde recently are painful. Khadse said, “It is very unfortunate that this happened to the family members of Gopinath Munde, who did lifelong service for the expansion of the BJP.”
On Thursday, Pankaja said that she considers BJP as her family, but the party is not with her. Significantly, there has been speculation over the past few years that he has been sidelined by the state BJP. Pankaja has served as the Minister of Rural Development, Women and Child Welfare when Devendra Fadnavis was the Chief Minister between 2014 and 2019. However, in the last assembly elections she lost to her cousin and Nationalist Congress Party leader Dhananjay Munde in the Munde family stronghold of Parli. He also took a jibe at the government after the first expansion of the Eknath Shinde-Fadnavis cabinet in August 2022.
Gopinath Munde, the former deputy leader of the BJP in the Lok Sabha, was appointed as the Minister of Rural Development by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014 after the Centre’s ouster. He died in a road accident on 3 June the same year.
