Maharashtra Election Result | BJP minister Pankaja Munde loses to cousin Dhananjay in Parli

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Senior BJP leader and minister in the state government, Pankaja Munde, lost her Parli Assembly seat by over 22,000 votes to her cousin, Dhananjay Munde.

Pankaja had defeated her cousin and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader by a margin of 25,000 votes in the 2014 polls from the constituency, a rural pocket located about 470 km from state capital Mumbai.

Dhananjay is the Leader of the Opposition in state Legislative Council, and, according to reports, was banking on the "poor performance" of his cousin sister to usher in the "change that's imminent".

Leads in Maharashtra show that while the BJP-Sena alliance is set to form the government, NCP is leading in 56 seats while Congress is leading in 38 of Maharashtra's 288 assembly seats in contention.