On counting day eve, Chavan’s home in Karad wears a deserted look

The Chavan family is confident of their “Baba’s” victory because one of their members has always won this seat since 1957.

Prithviraj Chavan’s home in Karad on Saturday.

In Patan Colony of Karad where Prithviraj Chavan and his family live, very few seem to be confident that the former chief minister will have a comfortable victory or a victory at all. The common refrain is, “Joorat takkar honar. (It will be a close fight).”

The Chavan family is, however, confident of their “Baba’s” victory because one of their members has always won this seat since 1957.

From a student, a slum-dweller, an autrickshow driver, a roadside vendor to cloth merchant, nobody wants to stick their neck out in favour of Chavan. Some neighbours of Chavan say he might win, others say it is not possible.

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Vikram Shah, a 21-year-old, seems to echo the sentiment of those who do not feel Chavan will emerge trumps. “When baba was the CM for three-and-a-half years, he hardly visited his constituency. I never saw him. He never even visited the gram panchayats or the council offices. He was never actively involved with development process here,” says Shah, who stays a stone’s throw away from Chavan’s house.

Abhijit K, a slum-dweller, who lives opposite Chavan’s residence, cannot say who will win this election— an opinion most slum-dwellers seem to share.

Suresh Mehta (53), a roadside watch-maker in Patan Colony, says,”There is no guarantee that Chavan will win…most of the time he was busy in Delhi or when he came here, he only caused traffic jam.”

Vilas Chavan, a farmer, says “Undalkar kaka visited our village at least thrice during campaigning, baba never came. Besides, whether it is roads, toilets or water tanks, only kaka provided us with these basic amenities,” he said.

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However, Parvati Nalwade, (50), a tea vendor, says, “Amcha babach jinkar…(Only our baba will win).” Azam Khan, a mechanic hopes his baba would win. “He is Mr Clean, after all,” he says.

Voices like these were few and far between in the colony where Chavan have held supremacy for decades. They might not believe that he will win, but in Karad everyone fondly addresses Prithviraj Chavan as “baba”. “The family, however, is confident Chavan will win. “He will win cent per cent,” said Chavan’s sister Vridula Ghorpade, a view shared by other relatives including daugthers-in-law.

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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