Pankaja Munde seeks action against BJP MLA Suresh Dhas

The bickering within the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Beed district, which has been in the news for all the wrong reasons over the last three months, has come to the fore.

- Shrinivas Deshpande and Surendra P Gangan

PUNE/MUMBAI:

The party's OBC face and state environment minister Pankaja Munde has spoken out against MLA Suresh Dhas, who had criticised her in connection with the sarpanch Santosh Deshmukh murder case.

Munde, whose cousin Dhananjay Munde was forced to resign from the Maharashtra cabinet earlier this month over his links with the alleged mastermind behind the murder, has requested the BJP leadership to warn Dhas not to bring up her name in connection with the case. On Wednesday, she said that despite being the BJP's national secretary, her party colleague was linking her with the murder case and damaging her reputation.

The brutal murder of Santosh Deshmukh, the sarpanch of Massajog village in Beed, on December 9 last year has sent shockwaves through Maharashtra's politics and placed Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Dhananjay Munde in the spotlight for his connections with one of the prime accused, Walmik Karad.