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Solapur: Water woes lead to Shinde’s defeat

Solapur revelled in Shinde’s defeat as celebrations erupted across the constituency moments after the results were declared.

“This is my 12th election, and I have never lost. I wanted to call it quits, but because Soniaji insisted, I am contesting.” Sushilkumar Shinde projected himself as a reluctant candidate. Perhaps the Union Home Minister had seen the writing on the wall. On Friday, Shinde lost by a margin of 1.51 lakh votes to BJP’s Sharad Bansode whom he had defeated in 2009.

Solapur revelled in Shinde’s defeat as celebrations erupted across the constituency moments after the results were declared. The celebrations were more deafening in Solapur city, which has been facing severe water shortage for years now. At Rajwada Chowk, where the BJP headquarters is located, party workers smeared each other with gulal, crackers were burst and sweets distributed.

Solapur city gets water after every two days and that too at a very low pressure. The problem had become such a big issue that Municipal Commissioner had to quit after corporators raised the decibel level. The civic chief later returned, as the government stood by him. Nevertheless, angry residents of South Solapur — called Sadar Bazaar — had decided not to allow Shinde to even enter the area during electioneering. “If he comes asking for vote, I will not allow him to step inside our gate,” Varsha Kalburgi, whose family lives in a bungalow opposite Shinde’s in the area, said during campaigning. “We want water every day. Bansode should make water his priority,” said a resident. Residents were also angry as Shinde was available only once or twice a month in Solapur.

Shinde’s loss — his first in three decades — was by a massive margin. What was more shocking was the fact that the man who defeated Shinde had himself been out of Solapur for long. “It’s clear that there’s a Modi wave and anger against Shinde for his non-performance,” said Bansode, who polled 5.19 lakh votes while Shinde secured 3.68 lakh votes.

AAP candidate Lalit Babar got only 9,500 votes, while BSP’s Sanjeev Sadaphulle bagged 20,000 votes. Of the 16 candidates in fray, except Shinde all lost their deposits.

Shinde had defeated Bansode by one lakh votes in 2009. After his defeat, Bansode had gone back to film production in Bollywood. However, the BJP roped him in this time, as it could not find anyone who could take Shinde head-on. “Bansode has proved to be a giant killer,” said a BJP leader.

BJP leaders said a rally held by Modi in Solapur city where he slammed the non-performance of Shinde went down well with the people. “Modi highlighted how Shinde failed to save sick industrial units in Solapur and did nothing to generate jobs,” said a Bansode associate.

— With inputs from Ejaz Hussain Mujawar

From the homepage

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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  • Solapur Sushilkumar Shinde Union Home Minister
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