AFTER NCP leader Ajit Pawar, a leader of the BJP has come out against the slogan of “batenge toh katenge (divided we will be destroyed)” deployed by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath during the Maharashtra campaign.

In an interview to The Indian Express, BJP MLC Pankaja Munde said: “Frankly, my politics is different. I won’t support it just because I belong to the same party. My belief is that we should work on development alone. A leader’s job is to make every living person on this land their own. Therefore, we need not bring any such topic to Maharashtra.”

At the same time, Munde added: “He said it in a different context and in the political situation of that land (Adityanath first used the slogan in UP). The meaning of that is not what we are using in Maharashtra. Modiji has given justice to everyone. He did not see caste or religion when he gave rations, housing or cylinders to people.”

Incidentally, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has himself been using the slogan “Ek hain toh safe hain (Together, we are safe)” which, rivals have said, is just another way of saying the same thing.

Earlier, Ajit Pawar implied that the politics represented by slogans such as “batenge toh katenge” won’t work in Maharashtra. “I have said this many times that it will not work in Maharashtra. It may work in UP, Jharkhand or other places,” Pawar, whose NCP has traditionally enjoyed support from minorities, said last week.

NCP leader and candidate Nawab Malik has also said that the BJP’s promise of an anti-conversion law in its manifesto was not on the Mahayuti’s agenda.

The daughter of the late BJP veteran Gopinath Munde, Pankaja, her supporters believe, has been sidelined in the party since the rise of the Modi-Amit Shah era. However, given the Munde legacy, she remains a strong OBC face that the party can’t ignore.

Pankaja lost the recent Lok Sabha polls which she reportedly contested reluctantly as she did not want to lose her hold in state politics. After the BJP’s poor performance in Maharashtra, the party placated her with an MLC seat as one of its corrective measures.

Under the Mahayuti coalition, the Munde family seat of Parli has gone to the NCP quota, and the latter has fielded Pankaja’s cousin Dhananjay Munde. The two contested against each other in the 2019 Assembly elections, with Dhananjay winning on the ticket of the NCP.

Pankaja told The Express that she feels sad that the BJP is not in the Parli contest. “But I have appealed to them (party workers) to campaign for the ‘Clock’ symbol (of the NCP), considering it the same as ‘Lotus’ (the BJP’s symbol).