Her political pedigree didn't suffice to win her a ticket to contest as a Bharatiya Janata Party candidate in Mumbai, but Poonam Mahajan, 28, is not dispirited.

Unlike other political sons and daughters, she didn't find the stage set when she entered, but is making the best of the rigour of electioneering wherever she's been the past weeks: Jalna, Buldhana, Jalgaon, Nanded and now Latur. The non-stop travelling is as tiring as leaving her four-year-old son back home is distressing, but she's using the opportunity to learn the ropes, she says.

“When I officially joined politics,” she says, “I plunged into the zilla parishad and other local elections. That was a learning experience since I got to see a completely different Maharashtra, its small villages and their people. So I am again ready to go wherever my party sends me.”

In Latur for a couple of days, she will be busy enough with her own political assignments to have to skip uncle Gopinath Munde's rally in Ambejogai, her father's hometown in neighbouring Beed.

It's not correct to say Munde is moulding her career, she says. “He's there whenever I need him, but otherwise I am like any other party worker. Vinodji (Tawde) decides where I should go, and I do that.”

Poonam is now general secretary of the BJP’s Yuva Morcha, and working on building a mass base for herself among the youth.

Among her pet subjects, and one that never fails to rouse young listeners, is

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