For BJP leader Gopinath Munde, the 45 degrees Celsius heat of Marathwada cannot be more scorching than the political skirmishes he has been in last year, including a dramatic resignation from all party posts and a quick turnaround after being placated. Contesting from Beed parliamentary constituency for the first time, the 2009 general elections are an important milestone for Munde, now the BJP’s face in Maharashtra. Having sulked over his detractors’ ascent, he now has a point to prove.

“How can you say I am angry with the party?” the 59-year-old leader demands. “I am attending 105 sabhas this election, in 26 BJP constituencies and 10 of the Shiv Sena, it’s more than anybody else in the party.” This is a new role for Munde, though he has been campaigning for the BJP across the state since 1980. “Pramodji hain nahin, that’s why I am attending 105 sabhas. I would otherwise have done 70 or 80.”

Back in the late 1960s, Pramod Mahajan was Munde’s senior and close friend in college in Ambejogai, Beed. Both were closely involved in student politics and with the RSS. Now, as the BJP fights its first general election without Mahajan, the five-time legislator is trying to claim the political void left by Mahajan’s death as rightfully his. “Pramodji’s loss has hurt the entire country, as well as Maharashtra. He was a great planner and strategist. And he would implement those strategies 100 per cent... He was our best campaigner, so that loss is there. But there is a new, young generation of campaigners in Maharashtra,” he told The Indian Express, naming Sena executive president Uddhav Thackeray, his chief detractor in the state BJP Nitin Gadkari, the chief ministers of eight BJP-ruled states and Narendra Modi, who is visiting 20 of the 26 constituencies where the BJP is fielding candidates. “He is a star campaigner,” he says, referring to the Gujarat CM. “Aur main bhi hoon (And so am I).”

... contd.