The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) announced its state executive on Friday, leaving out former ministers and dissidents like Eknath Khadse and Pankaja Munde from formal organisational positions.
However, former minister Chandrashekhar Bavankule, who was denied a re-nomination for the state assembly elections, has been rehabilitated in the party organisation as a general secretary. Loyalists of former chief minister and incumbent leader of opposition Devendra Fadnavis, like Prasad Lad, figure prominently in the list as office bearers.
BJP Maharashtra unit president and former minister Chandrakantdada Patil announced the state executive, which also includes six general secretaries, and 11 vice-presidents.
Apart from Bavankule, legislators Sujitsinh Thakur, Devyani Farande, Ravindra Chavan, and Shrikant Bharatiya, who was an officer on special duty in the chief minister’s office during Fadnavis’ tenure, will be general secretaries. Vijay Puranik has been retained as the general secretary (organisation).
However, while Pankaja has not been granted a formal position within the organisation, her younger sister and Beed MP Dr Pritam Munde has been brought in as a vice-president, along with Khadse’s daughter-in-law and Raver MP Raksha.
Ram Shinde, a former minister, who had made his disappointment obvious at being passed over for a legislative council nomination, has been included as a vice-president along with former ministers Jaykumar Rawal, Dr Sanjay Kute, Prasad Lad, and Jaiprakash Thakur. Mulund MLA Mihir Kotecha will be the party’s treasurer.
When asked about Pankaja’s exclusion from the executive, Patil said she was likely to get a position at the central level and would be a member of the state core committee.
However, sources said that Pankaja’s name was in the list of vice-presidents till the last minute. “She may have refused to take up this position, leading to Pritam’s inclusion,” the leader said.
Pankaja, the daughter of BJP stalwart Gopinath Munde, faced a shock defeat at the hands of her estranged cousin and NCP minister Dhananjay Munde from Parli in Beed. Her supporters attribute the defeat to internal sabotage. Pankaja often pitched herself as a chief ministerial aspirant and pointed to her Bahujan (non-Brahmin) support base.
Khadse, Pankaja, Mehta, and former education minister Vinod Tawde will now be special invitees in the state executive.
Patil said Khadse, who had to quit the Fadnavis cabinet after a slew of allegations, and was denied a re-nomination for the assembly, was part of the state executive, as was former minister Prakash Mehta. Khadse has made his resentment obvious on several occasions in the past.
“In our party, no one is permanently disgruntled,” claimed Patil.
Patil also denied that Pritam and Raksha had been accommodated in the organisation as a compromise and pointed to how they had been elected to the Lok Sabha for two consecutive terms.
