BJP's Jhansi ki Rani: Meet Pankaja, Gopinath Munde's heir apparent

As she stood at the BJP headquarters in Delhi accepting condolences from senior BJP leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, you couldn’t help but think that even in the face of shock and abject loss, Pankaja-Palwe Munde appeared a picture of grace. Having stood in her father’s shadows for several years as she ran his back offices, Pankaja came into her own in 2009 when she won the Parli constituency in the Assembly elections.

All eyes are on Pankaja as the likely inheritor of Munde’s political legacy. The senior OBC leader – the only BJP leader with a huge mass base of his own in the state, particularly the Vanjara community – clearly signalled who he was nurturing as his heir in 2009.

His nephew Dhananjay had been for several years, running the show in Beed’s local level politics from Panchayat Samitis to the Zilla Parishad. But when Munde was asked to stand for Lok Sbaha elections in 2009, he passed the mantle of the Parli Assembly constituency – which he represented five times – to daughter Pankaja, then just 30 years old.

A disgruntled Dhananjay entered into talks with the NCP and relations with his uncle deteriorated, even though he was accommodated by the BJP as a member of the upper house of legislature. In 2012, by the time he formally joined the NCP, Dhananjay and his father Panditanna (Munde’s brother) were completely estranged. Both campaigned hard for the NCP in Beed against Gopinath Munde in the 2014 elections.

Pankaja, ending a highly successful first term as MLA and preparing to defend her Parli seat in October, may be called up to take a bigger stage. She will be able to do it with some ease as she  more or less ran her father’s 2014 campaign in Beed single-handedly while he travelled across the state campaigning for BJP and Shiv Sena candidates. For almost a month, she was camped in her father’s Parli home in Beed district, addressing any where between 20 and 25 public meetings a day, including one or two large rallies where attendance was an average of 20,000.

Speaking to this reporter during her daily 16-hour campaign schedules for her father in April just before the Lok Sabha election, she explained briefly how she is different from the senior Munde.

“I get very stressed out if I’m running late or if things are not organised. He has a more relaxed way of dealing with things, it’s almost as if nothing will stress him out,” she said.

Munde did not have too many star campaigners in his constituency, barring a visit by party president Rajnath Singh. It didn’t matter much – Pankaja-tai as she’s called had it mostly under control on her own.

In the arid district where temperatures soaring to as much as 43 degrees Celsius, she still saw huge turnouts at her rallies and street-corner meetings. Women and youngsters were especially enthusiastic.

She was introduced routinely as the BJP’s Jhansi ki Rani in Beed, a lone soldier against the NCP’s war veterans. Faced with the usual question about dynasty in politics and whether she would have preferred to enter on her own merit, she simply said she stopped answering that question with the old trip about industrialist-ka-beta-industrialist. Her work, her approachability as an MLA who can bring results and her keenness to learn speak for her, she would say.

“I am not in politics for fame or fortune,” she said at one rally. “Thanks to god and to my father, I have plenty of those already, we have enough to be able to use some for those in need. I am in politics because my father has nurtured you, and it’s my responsibility to continue to ask what you need now.”

Growing up, Pankaja says, she had never imagined a career in politics. But having jumped in, she intends to make the most of it. “I don’t really have a choice about it – these people now need me,” she said.

She’s spent her first term learning, engaging with the senior leadership of the party and earning her spurs. Apart from being MLA of Parli, she’s now also leader of the Maharashtra unit’s youth wing and considered a state-level leader. Pankaja has the political know-how as well as the support of Beed’s voters, making up for what she lacks in experience with additional doses of enthusiasm. There’s little doubt about the bright future within the BJP party before her.