Crowd Funding Helps Pankaja Munde Raise Rs 11 Crore To Pay GST Arrears

BJP leader Pankaja Munde’s supporters have collected over Rs 11 crore through crowd funding in response to a GST notice for Rs 19 crore arrears against Vaidyanath Cooperative Sugar Mill controlled by her. They have declared that the entire amount would be raised within a few days so that she will be presented with the purse of the fund on the occasion of Dussehra in a public function. Daughter of BJP giant Gopinath Munde, she was a cabinet minister in the last BJP government headed by Devendra Fadnavis. Always eager to indicate her willingness to be the chief minister someday, Pankaja was sidelined in the state after she lost the 2019 assembly election to her cousin Dhananjay Munde, from the family stronghold Parali in Beed district in Marathwada region. Time and again indirectly suggesting that her defeat was engineered from within the BJP, she has been touring Marathwada in a bid to mobilise support for her. The GST notice has provided her with a tool to hit out at her unnamed foes, in the party and outside. Her future had become precarious since Dhananjay is now in the Shinde-Fadnavis cabinet, following his leader Ajit Pawar. In the midst of these developments, Pankaja has received the GST notice which seems godsend as it has enabled her to rouse her supporters from various parts of Maharashtra.