Senior BJP leader Gopinath Munde, sulking over some decisions taken in his own state Maharashtra, on Saturday held discussions with senior party colleagues M Venkaiah Naidu and Ananth Kumar but party President Nitin Gadkari stayed away from the exercise.
A crucial meeting of the Bharatiya Janata Party members of Parliament, members of Legislative Assembly, members of Legislative Council and office-bearers, convened by Maharashtra unit chief Sudhir Mungantiwar in the backdrop of sulking leader Gopinath Munde's "rebellion," got underway in Mumbai on Tuesday. Munde himself has so far not made an appearance at the meeting.
The Parli assembly seat in Beed district will again see his daughter Pankaja Munde and nephew Dhananjay Munde lock horns for supremacy.
The Bharatiya Janata Party had not yet given a thought to who would be its prime ministerial candidate for the next general elections, it said on Saturday.
Instead, senior Maharashtra leaders Eknath Khadse and Pandurang Phundkar will be representing him before the party high command in New Delhi. The BJP cancelled its daily briefing in Parliament on Monday. According to sources, the party expected media persons to raise questions about Munde's resignation.
Sulking Bharatiya Janata Party leader Gopinath Munde appears moving closer to the Congress.
Bharatiya Janata Party general secretary Gopinath Munde on Thursday said rebellion in the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party alliance might work in favour of the saffron combine.
Talks between Bharatiya Janata Party president Nitin Gadkari and sulking senior party leader Gopinath Munde remained inconclusive late on Sunday with both sides sticking to their stand over the appointment of their men in key posts in Maharashtra and hold over party politics in the state. "I have been holding talks with our state in-charge M Venkaiah Naidu, Ananth Kumar and general secretary (organisation) Ramlal. Today, I met party president Nitin Gadkari," he said.
Panditanna Munde, elder brother of senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Gopinath Munde, on Thursday joined the Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party in the presence of his son (Gopinath's nephew) Dhananjay, and vowed to defeat his brother in the election.
150 BJP elected local representatives in Beed resign in protest against Pritam Munde's exclusion from the Union ministry.
BJP deputy leader in the Lok Sabha Gopinath Munde has been appointed Chairman of Parliament's Public Accounts Committee (PAC), a post vacated by expelled BJP leader Jaswant Singh.
"I am not leaving the party. Defection is not in my blood," Pankaja told reporters.
Munde, who had to eat humble pie in New Delhi a day earlier when he said that he will not quit the party, landed in Mumbai on Thursday and immediately launched a attack against BJP President Nitin Gadkari.
Political differences blurred as Congress president Sonia Gandhi wrote a personal letter to Union minister Gopinath Munde's family condoling his death and Rahul Gandhi visited the Bharatiya Janata Party office to pay respects to the departed leader.
'The party is the ultimate truth. There is no question of me being upset'
She hailed Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah and BJP president J P Nadda as her leaders.
Nationalist Congress Party President Sharad Pawar on Saturday said that his party had not made any offer to the disgruntled Bharatiya Janata Party leader Gopinath Munde.
The Bharatiya Janata Party is still confident that the Shiv Sena will never divorce it in Maharashtra and both the Sena and the BJP will contest all the polls together. This was an indication given by the BJP General Secretary Gopinath Munde while speaking to media persons at Thane on Sunday on the ongoing changed equations between the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party.
Sulking senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Gopinath Munde's joust with the party leadership has taken a new turn with the Maharashtra unit chief calling for a meeting of party MPs, MLAs, MLCs and office-bearers to discuss the situation arising out of the rebellion.
Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader L K Advani was not amused with some of the party MPs joining RJD supremo Lalu Prasad and SP chief Mulayam Singh to hold a mock Parliament session and reprimanded his colleague Gopinath Munde for participating in it.
Though it did strike him to give the statement earlier, he could not as Mahajan was critical and his sister-in-law Rekha was not keeping well.
Gopinath Munde's laidback attitude and ambition for the Maharashtra chief minister's post has got him stuck on the periphery. His equations within the party and hierarchy -- mainly access to Modi -- needs to improve, feels N Suresh.
Maharashtra Bharatiya Janata Party leader Pankaja Munde on Friday said she was planning to take a break for "one or two months" as she was anguished at her integrity being questioned time and again.
A visibly cheerful Gopinath Munde, Bharatiya Janata Party's deputy leader in the Lok Sabha, on his arrival in Mumbai, reiterated his decision to continue to be in the party. He lashed at his rivals for running a concerted campaign to defame him and said they stood exposed now. In an interview with Sanjay Jog, Munde spoke about the recent developments and his future plans
In an unexpected development, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena president Raj Thackeray announced his party's public support on Tuesday to Bharatiya Janata Party leader Gopinath Munde who is attempting to retain his Beed Lok Sabha seat in Maharashtra.
The supporters of sulking Bharatiya Janata Party leader Gopinath Munde continued to throng his Worli residence in Mumbai on Thursday, hoping that the June 18 meeting in Delhi, convened by the party to discus his fate, would go their leader's way.
"Some of the top party leaders, including party president Rajnath Singh have spoken to Munde on phone and asked him not to precipitate matters and come to Delhi to talk about his problems," a senior BJP leader told rediff.com on Monday morning. According to sources, others who spoke to Munde include Arun Jaitley and BJP vice president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi.
The announcement of candidature of Bharatiya Janata Party general secretary Gopinath Munde's daughter Pankaja along with that of cousin Poonam Mahajan has met with severe criticism that BJP too is going the Congress way in following dynastic politics. However, the flak is the last thing on Pankaja's mind as she goes about campaigning for the October 13 Assembly poll from this constituency in Marathwada's hinterland.
The Election Commission is mulling issuing a notice to Bharatiya Janata Party leader Gopinath Munde on his statement that he had spent Rs 8 crore in the last Lok Sabha elections much above the prescribed ceiling as the Congress stepped up the demand for his disqualification as Member of Parliament.
The Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party-led opposition alliance in Maharashtra will win 35 of the 48 Lok Sabha seats, senior BJP leader Gopinath Munde claimed here today.
Taking potshots at senior Maharashtra Bharatiya Janata Party leader Gopinath Munde, the Shiv Sena on Monday said it will be Narendra Modi who will have the final word on the issue of chief ministerial candidate in the assembly polls.
The biennial polls of the Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA) on October 18 will see a straight fight for the presidentship between two Maharashtra political heavyweights -- Sharad Pawar and Gopinath Munde.
The Maharashtra unit of Aam Aadmi Party on Monday filed a complaint with the Election Commission against Union Agriculture Minister and Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar for asking his party workers to "vote twice" in polls and sought derecognition of his party.
Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Gopinath Munde was detained on Monday night for the second time in a day, at the hill station of Lonavala, when he was proceeding to violence-hit Sangli-Miraj, party leaders said. Earlier in the day, the former state home minister was not allowed by authorities to board a flight to Sangli in western Maharashtra. He then proceeded to Sangli by road, but was stopped by the police at Lonavala, approximately 65 km from Pune.
Under flak, Munde said the video clip, in which he was purportedly heard making the comments against Pankaja, was edited and fake. He claimed that his remarks were "distorted" to project him as a "villain" by his rivals to win elections.
Pankaja Munde, who is the MLA from Parli, led the campaign for Gopinath Munde during the Lok Sabha elections against the single-minded, 'undo the Mundes' campaign by the Pawars and the Nationalist Congress Party. She is not set to take over his mantle, says Mahesh Vijapurkar.
The party has to zero in on its chief ministerial candidate from one of three leaders -- Union Minister for Surface Transport Nitin Gadkari, state BJP president Devendra Fadnavis and Leader of Opposition in the state council Vinod Tawde. But the biggest handicap with them is that they can't match Munde in terms of popularity.
In her three recent tweets posted on November 28, she congratulated Maharashtra's new Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray but not the government formed by the Shiv Sena, Nationalist Congress Party and Congress.
Rajnath was protesting the hikes in product prices.
The Central Bureau of Investigation has taken over the probe into the death of Bharatiya Janata Party leader Gopinath Munde following a road accident in Delhi.