Mumbai: Raksha Khadse, the now three-time MP from Raver in Maharashtra, has been inducted into Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Council of Ministers.
The daughter-in-law of former senior BJP leader Eknath Khadse, Raksha Khadse became the youngest MP in the 16th Lok Sabha, along with Heena Gavit, after voters in Raver elected her to the Lower House in 2014. This time, she defeated Shriram Patil of the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) by a margin of 2.72 lakh votes.
“I’m very thankful to the leadership for giving me this opportunity. This was a good surprise for me. I did not work to get any post but worked only as a common karyakarta,” RakshaKhadse told the media earlier Sunday. She also thanked the people of Raver for electing her to the Lok Sabha for a third consecutive term.
Also Read: ‘Campaign on local concerns, better coordination’ — how MVA prevailed over Mahayuti in Maharashtra
Who is Raksha Khadse
Raksha Khadse, 37, holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science. She was married to Eknath Khadse’s son Nikhil, who died by suicide in 2013.
She started her political journey in 2010 by becoming the sarpanch of Kothali village in Muktainagar in Jalgaon district. While father-in-law Eknath Khadse joined Sharad Pawar-led NCP in 2020 after his exit from the BJP, Raksha chose to remain with the party.
Raksha Khadse belongs to the Leva Patil community, an OBC sub case, which constitutes about 35 percent of the voters in Raver constituency. In 2019, she defeated her opponent by a margin of over 3 lakh voters. The Leva Patil used to earlier rally behind the Congress, but has supported the BJP in large numbers with Eknath Khadse’s rise in the BJP. When Eknath Khadse was denied the ticket in the 2019 assembly elections, the Leva Patil community had refused to support the BJP.
Raksha’s inclusion in the Council of Ministers will help BJP get traction during the assembly elections. So her inclusion sends a clear message to the state leadership and cadre of the BJP.
She was rewarded for exhibiting loyalty to the party with a ticket to contest this Lok Sabha election from Raver, the seat she won in 2014 and again in 2019. But her relationship with Khadse did not change even after she got the ticket from BJP. In fact, when Raksha got the ticket, Eknath announced that he will not be contesting Lok Sabha against his daughter-in-law.
In April, Eknath Khadse said that he would be returning to BJP. However, he still hasn’t formally joined the party yet.
Eknath Khadse was a BJP heavyweight before he fell out with deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis around two years ago and switched over to NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar). He practically sowed the seeds for the BJP’s growth in the northern region of Maharashtra. When the BJP won the 2014 state polls, Khadse was among the CM hopefuls but lost out to Fadnavis. Although he was inducted into the Maharashtra cabinet, he was soon asked to resign from the cabinet in 2016 over a series of graft charges.
One of the serious allegations was a land purchase by Khadse’s wife and son-in-law in Pune’s Bhosari industrial area, for which he was accused of conflict of interest. He eventually resigned from the cabinet post.
Post that, he was looking for a national role but was not considered for any and eventually, he joined undivided the NCP in 2020 and stayed with Sharad Pawar after the split.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)
Also Read: BJP lost 49 of 224 seats it won with over 50% vote share in 2019, dent in Maharashtra, UP & Rajasthan