Irresistible rise of the Munde sisters

She grew up in Mumbai and spent a few years in the US with her husband, but ask Pankaja Munde to cook Maharashtrian village staples like the bhakri and thecha on a chula, and she'll do it with ease. It's this quality that makes her extremely popular with the masses in her hometown and her father's constituency Beed. "She's grounded and understands local issues well and communicates easily with all of us," says a BJP worker from the region. Known to be outspoken and an extrovert who loves being among people, the 35-year-old MLA from Parli stepped into active politics by chance.

In 2007, when Pankaja was living in the US with her husband Amit Palve, she got a late night call from her father Gopinath Munde asking her if she could relocate to India and join politics to be his heir. The late BJP leader suspected his nephew and then his political heir of being hand in glove with the Nationalist Congress Party and wanted a trustworthy member of his family to nurture his constituency - Parli.

The decision was tough but Pankaja with her husband and son obediently moved to India and settled in Pune. For the next two years, Pankaja toiled in Parli and shuttled between her father's constituency and her Boat Club Road home in Pune. "Within years she built a massive support base and won the 2009 Maharashtra Assembly elections with a thumping majority while her father, now assured that his home turf was safe, became the state BJP's face in Delhi.

Her younger sister Pritam Munde Khade, 32, didn't have to toil in the heat and dust of Beed for her record breaking Lok Sabha victory margin last month. By now, Beed is devoted to the Munde family. Soon after the senior Munde's death in a car accident in Delhi, the Maharashtra BJP picked the young dermatologist to replace her father. They didn't want the constituency to slip out of the BJP's kitty. If no member of the Munde family contested, then other parties would have put up candidates in the by-polls, making it an open contest, something the BJP and the Munde family didn't want to risk. The best bet was to ask Pritam to put her medical practice on the backburner and head to the Lok Sabha.

When Pritam enters the Lok Sabha at the start of the winter session, she'll have her cousin - her mother's brother's daughter - Poonam Mahajan for company. Mahajan, 33, won the Lok Sabha polls in May this year defeating two-term Congress MP Priya Dutt by a huge margin.

While critics of the Munde-Mahajan family within the BJP murmur about the rise of dynastic politics in the party, fielding the three daughters was a clever strategy by party leaders. While Poonam converted suburban Mumbai's displeasure with Dutt's inaction into votes for her party, Pankaja and Pritam are ideal choices to carry on their father's legacy and bring the OBC votes under one family umbrella in caste-sensitive rural politics.

The sisters are temperamentally poles apart. If Pankaja is outspoken and an extrovert, Pritam is known to be more reserved and quiet. Ever since she moved to India, Pankaja handled her father's office and mingled with her supporters, winning them over with her easy charm and knowledge of local issues. The dominant Vanjari community in Beed instantly accepted the Mumbai-bred daughter of their leader. Their cousin Poonam is known to have been interested in her father's work-politics-since she was a child. When she was barely ten, she accompanied her father to the see the famous rath of LK Advani's rath yatra in 1990.

The Munde sisters and their cousin may be different in their personalities and career choices but the one thing that binds them is destiny-all three got into politics when tragedy struck their fathers.