Mumbai: Sidelined in Maharashtra politics for close to five years, BJP leader and former minister Pankaja Munde on Tuesday assured to take the political battlefield soon.
Pankaja is the daughter of late BJP leader and former deputy chief minister and ex-union minister Gopinath Munde and niece of the saffron party’s troubleshooter late Pramod Mahajan.
“You are my strength… during the statewide ‘Shiv Shakti Yatra’, I have got a very good response, I am overwhelmed,” said Pankaja, former rural development minister in the erstwhile Devendra Fadnavis-led BJP-Shiv Sena government between 2014-19.
In the 2019 Vidhan Sabha polls, Pankaja lost the traditional Parli seat at the hands of her cousin Dhananjay Munde of NCP, who is now the agriculture minister in the Eknath Shinde-led BJP-Shiv Sena-NCP government.
“I will not be sitting at home…I will take to the political battlefield,” she said amid thunderous applause while addressing the annual rally on Dussehra at Sawargaon in Beed district.
Before she spoke, her sister and Beed MP Dr Pritam Munde addressed the gathering.
During her address, Pankaja spoke about the condition of farmers in the state, the Maratha reservation issue, the problems involving the OBCs and the drug menace.
(Published 24 October 2023, 13:50 IST)