A few years after he publicly fell out with his uncle, the late Gopinath Munde, Dhananjay Munde was nominated by NCP as the leader of the Opposition in the state legislative council.
Once seen as Munde Sr's political heir, Dhananjay was ignored in favour of cousin Pankaja in the 2009 assembly polls. Though he was nominated to the legislative council in 2010, the seeds of a bitter family feud had been sown and the very next year, Dhananjay split with his uncle formally and later joined NCP.
Incidentally, despite the Modi wave, sympathy for her father who was a Union minister when died in a freak road mishap in Delhi earlier this year, and Shiv Sena's support for her candidature, Pankaja, who is now Maharashtra's rural development minister, could win by just 25,895 votes in her father's pocket borough of Parli, in Beed district, against her estranged cousin.
In 2009, Pankaja trounced Prof TP Munde of the Congress by over 36,000 votes from the constituency located in Marathwada, which her father had represented in the legislature since 1980, barring a shock defeat in 1985. In 2009, Munde Sr contested and won the Lok Sabha poll from Beed in a contest which had been polarised around caste (OBC/Vanjari vs Marathas) by NCP.
Once he is formally appointed to the post, the 39-year-old Dhananjay will take on his erstwhile party which had been built up by his late uncle, who was BJP's tallest leader and OBC face in Maharashtra and also a staunch opponent of the uncle-nephew duo of Sharad and Ajit Pawar, who call the shots in NCP.
Gopinath Munde's elder brother Panditrao aka Panditanna, who is Dhananjay's father, was his constituency manager, but after his son's estrangement from his uncle, Panditrao too joined NCP.
Like his uncle, Dhananjay is a forceful orator, having begun his political career in Beed Zilla Parishad, and began nurturing his uncle's constituency in the drought-prone district which sees seasonal migration of over three lakh sugarcane cutters.
"He is with the people round-the-clock," said Dhananjay's brother-in-law and NCP MLA from Gangakhed in Parbhani, Dr Madhusudan Kendre, adding that his oratory, aggression, political orientation and outreach among the youth since his days in the BJP when he was the party's youth wing chief, would stand Dhananjay in good stead.
"Despite the Modi wave and sympathy, Pankaja won by a slender margin," Dr Kendre pointed out. In 2011, Dhananjay, who was educated in New English School and Vaijnath College in Parli, before completing his degree from Symbiosis in Pune, rebelled against his uncle by getting his candidate elected with support from Congress and NCP against the official BJP nominee.
Earlier, like his sugar baron uncle, who controls a slew of co-operative and private sugar factories in Marathwada, he had also founded his own private sugar mill, Jagamitra Sugar Mills Private Limited, at Pus in Ambejogai taluka.
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