BJP leaders Pankaja Munde, Raosaheb Danve fail to register win in Maharashtra's nagar panchayat polls

The BJP may have got a stupendous victory in the local body elections in Maharashtra, but the results also sprung some big setbacks. The biggest name to have faced humiliation in the nagar panchayat polls was that of an OBC leader and Women and Child Development Minister Pankaja Munde.

BJP lost the Parli Nagar parishad to NCP and to make things worse for Pankaja, her estranged cousin and NCP leader Dhananjay Munde registered a thumping win for his party by winning president's post at the council and also getting a clear majority.

The NCP won 27 of the 33 Parli Municipal Council seats and its candidate Sarojini Halge won the president's post with a margin of over 5,000 votes over the BJP candidate.

Pankaja and Dhananjay, who is also the leader of Opposition in the State Legislative Council, have been indulged in a bitter political war over the succession of political legacy of Gopinath Munde. While Dhananjay shifted his political base to the Sharad Pawar led NCP, Pankaja claimed herself as the rightful heir to her father's legacy.

Though, Pankaja was not the sole BJP leaders to have got a setback. Mandakini Lonikar, wife of State Water Supply Minister Babanrao Lonikar lost the president's post in the Partur civic body in Jalna district of Marathwada.

Congress won the Partur, Jalna and Bhokardan Municipal Council elections, while BJP won the Ambad Municipal Council. In Bhokardan, a part of Raosaheb Danve's Lok Sabha constituency, BJP was defeated by the Congress. When asked about the party's dismal performance in the Marathwada region, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said, "We have managed to score in areas where we had no representation at all. But it's true that we lost at some places, we will have to work hard in Marathwada".