Mumbai, Dec 12 (IANS) Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leaders joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Shiv Sena in felicitating BJP’s Gopinath Munde on his 61st birthday Sunday.
The felicitation was organided by ‘Gopinath Munde Gaurav Samiti’ at the Shanmukhanand Hall here.
Besides senior BJP leader L.K.Advani, BJP president Nitin Gadkari and Shiv Sena executive president Uddhav Thackeray, Congress leader and union Heavy Industries Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and NCP leader and state Tourism Minister Chhagan Bhujbal were also present.
Speaking on the occasion, Deshmukh recalled his three-decade old friendship with Munde.
‘Munde is a glowing example of how a friend should be in life. He inspires everybody by his sheer hard work and struggle to rise up in life,’ he said.
Bhujbal said Munde never backed out of any challenge which he encountered in his personal or professional life.
‘Munde has an excellent knowledge of the social happenings and the problems of the deprived sections, his contribution to the cause of the other backward classes (OBCs) is immense,’ remarked Bhujbal, himself a prominent OBC leader.
Several speakers recalled how Munde, who was born in a poor farmer’s family in Nathra village of Beed district, to Pandurang and Limbabai, struggled against all odds to come up in life and rose to become Maharastra’s deputy chief minister during the Shiv Sena-BJP reign (1995-99) and now serves as deputy leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha.
