Mumbai: A sulking Pankaja Munde has been accommodated in the newly constituted state executive of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as a special invitee with an assurance that she will be catapulted in to national political limelight, to fill the void left by her late father Gopinath Munde. Her sister, Lok Sabha MP Dr Pritam Munde has been inducted in the state executive as vice president. However, the newly constituted state executive by state BJP president Chandrakant Patil includes out of favor, imports from other parties and poll discards.
The newly constituted state BJP executive includes 12 state vice presidents, six general secretaries, 12 secretaries, chiefs of party’s morcha’s and 18 other sector related cells. Patil in a statement issued here on Friday claimed that he has given representation to new and young faces, and also gave representation while taking into account regional balances. The new state executive is dominated by 33 percent women party cadres. Besides this there are 139 invitees and 58 are special invitees, that includes partys MLAs and MP’s as well.
Those who lost the 2019 Assembly elections or were denied party tickets like – Ram Shinde, Eknath Khadse, Prakash Mehta, Chandrashekhar Bawankule, Vinod Tawde, Dilip Kamble, Amar Sable, Smita Wagh, Anil Bonde, Hansraj Ahir, Pramod Jathar, Rajkumar Badole and Amrish Raje Atram have been included as Special Invitees.
However, many former legislators who have faded from the limelight and imports from other parties, like – Shobhatai Fadnavis, Madhukar Pichad, Laxman Dhoble, Dr Madhav Kinhalkar, Jaisingrao Gaikwad-Patil, Jagdish Gupta, Madhu Chavan, Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil and others find place in the new state executive as invitees and special invitees.
But what has raised many eyebrows is the inclusion of partys former IT Cell incharge Shweta Shalini who has been given the task of managing party affairs in Pune. After having been forced to withdraw from the recent Legislative Council elections to the EMLA constituency, Dr Ajit Gopchade has been made to head the partys Health cell. Partys most visible and erudite face on television news channels Madhav Bhandari has been made the party vice president. The role of chief party spokesperson has now been given to Keshav Upadhaye.
