Mumbai: Thousands of mourners gathered for Union minister Gopinath Munde’s funeral in Beed. Munde’s eldest daughter and Parali legislator Pankaja Munde-Palve performed the last rites. Top BJP leaders, L K Advani, Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari, Sushma Swaraj, other union ministers, and Sena Chief Uddhav Thackeray were present at the funeral.
Earlier, senior party leaders and family members received the coffin at Latur airport. The body was taken from the Mumbai residence of the Munde family, where security forces accorded a guard of honour, for the flight to Latur.
The body was kept for public homage at the sprawling Vaijnath Sugar Factory. The state government has announced a three-day mourning for Munde.
Munde was born Dec 12, 1949, in Parali-Vaijnath village where he had his schooling.
Soon afterwards, he plunged into student politics along with BJP strongman and later his brother-in-law, late Pramod Mahajan, and was imprisoned during the Emergency of 1975-1977.
Over the years, Munde was elected five times as legislator in Maharashtra, then Leader of Opposition in the Maharashtra assembly, deputy chief minister of the state, and subsequently as the deputy leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha, and last week was made the union minister for rural development.
