Big crowd in attendance, CM files nomination in Karad

The huge crowd that turned up for Chavan’s three-km rally has surprised political observers and voters in Karad.

Chavan on way to file his nomination from the Karad South on Saturday. ( Source: Express photo by Prashant Nadkar )

Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan on Saturday drew a massive crowd while filing his nomination papers from Karad South constituency where he will take on Congressmen like seven-time sitting MLA Vilaskaka Patil-Undalkar, who is now fighting as an Independent, and Atul Bhosale of BJP.

After filing his nomination, Chavan addressed the crowd. Slamming the NCP, he said, “The kind of terms and conditions like chief ministership for two-and-a-half years that the party put forth clearly showed the NCP had no intention to continue with the alliance.”

The huge crowd that turned up for Chavan’s three-km rally has surprised political observers and voters in Karad. “In last 10 years, this was the biggest rally held in this part,” said Arjun Kharat, who had come all the way from Sangli to attend the rally. “I am delighted at the support the CM has received at the outset. This only reflects what will happen on the counting day,” said Kharat, a Congress worker.

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The CM is facing a challenge from former Congressmen. The principal opposition is from Undalkar (76), who was in for a disappointment on Saturday, with just about as less than 1000 of his supporters turning up when he filed his nomination papers as an Independent candidate.

Undalkar was being wooed by Sharad Pawar-led NCP, but refused to join the party though he has resigned from the Congress. “Undalkar has asked NCP to support him from outside, but has refused to join the party,” said Hanumant M, a close supporter of Undalkar. Chavan is also facing opposition from Atul Bhosale, who switched from Congress to the BJP three weeks ago. Bhosale, in fact, was considered close to Chavan.

Yet another surprise candidate in Karad South constituency is Ajinkya Patil, the son of Bihar Governor D Y Patil. Ajinkya has been fielded by the Shiv Sena, but he is considered a light-weight. After Undalkar refused to take its support, the NCP has fielded Rajendra Yadav.

Manoj Dattatrye More

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades. Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died. Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More

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