Pimpri-Chinchwad seats: Big enthusiasm, but small rise in voter turnout from 2019 polls
According to election officials, Bhosari which was racing ahead in polling through the day, registered around 61 per cent voting by the deadline of 6 pm.
In 2019, Bhosari had registered just 59. 71 per cent voting.
CONTRARY to expectations and the visible enthusiasm among voters, the three seats of Pimpri-Chinchwad registered a slight increase in voting percentage in the 2024 assembly polls compared to the 2019 assembly polls.
According to election officials, Bhosari which was racing ahead in polling through the day, registered around 61 per cent voting by the deadline of 6 pm. In 2019, Bhosari had registered just 59. 71 per cent voting. Chinchwad which was trailing Bhosari in terms of voting percentage finished with around 56 per cent voting compared to 53.55 per cent registered in 2019. The reserved seat of Pimpri, which witnessed a slow pace of voting compared to the other two seats, ended up with 51.29 per cent voting compared to around 50.21 per cent voting in the 2019 assembly elections.
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Of the three seats, the two seats of Bhosari and Chinchwad witnessed a bitter battle. While in the third seat of Pimpri, the campaigning lacked enthusiasm and was coloured with candidates refraining from attacking each other. The scene though was different in Chinchwad and Bhosari where the Maha Vikas Aghadi and Mahayuti candidates put up a hard fight.
In Chinchwad seat, the fight was between Shankar Jagtap of BJP and Rahul Kalate of NCP (SP). Jagtap was contesting the assembly election for the first time while Kalate had twice contested the election unsuccessfully. Kalatte had however given a tough fight to Laxman Jagtap, brother of Shankar Jagtap, in the 2019 elections which had made the BJP cautious.
In Bhosari, sitting MLA Mahesh Landge had to slog it out against Ajit Gavhane of the NCP (SP). Both are relatives but are arch rivals on the political turf. In the closing days of campaigning, it was widely believed that Gavhane had succeeded in making inroads in Landge’s territory. Landge, who is Pimpri-Chinchwad’s most popular politician currently, had launched his campaign months before the Election Commission announced the polls.
In Pimpri seat, NCP had renominated Anna Bansode despite opposition from its own camp. The NCP (SP) had nominated Sulakshna Shilkwant who was contesting her first election.
The three seats of Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial including Pimpri, Chinchwad and Bhosari saw a slow start in the morning. However, towards noon and after that, the pace of voting picked up especially in Bhosari and Chinchwad. Polling in Pimpri remained slow through the day.
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By 5 pm, Bhosari had registered 55 per cent voting — the highest, Chinchwad with 50 per cent and Pimpri the lowest with 42 per cent voting.
Bhosari remained ahead of the two seats through the day. Initially by 9 am, it had registered 6 per cent voting which is more or less similar to Chinchwad and Pimpri. However, Bhosari later picked up pace and after every two hours, it remained ahead of the other two seats in terms of percentage.
By 11 am, it had registered 16 per cent voting. By 1 pm, the voting went up to 31 percent. By 3 pm, it stood at 41 per cent and by 5 pm, voting in Bhosari was registered at 55 per cent.
Like Bhosari, Chinchwad also had a slow start but gained momentum later in the day. After a slow start in the first two hours of the morning when it registered around 6 per cent voting, the Chinchwad seat also picked up speed later in the afternoon. By 5 pm, it had registered 50 per cent.
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In Pimpri Assembly seats, polling was slow through the day. In the first two hours of polling, only around 4 per cent voters had turned up. In the next two hours, it went up to 11 per cent and then to 31 per cent. Even during noon hours, queues remained short. By 5 pm, the Pimpri seat had registered only 42 per cent voting.
However, polling officials said the polling percentage of Bhosari and Chinchwad had expected to go far beyond the 60 per cent mark. ”This is because polling was underway even after 6 pm. We had taken all voters who were in queues till 6 pm. The polling ended at some places late in the evening,” officials said. The final figure of voting were available only at 11.15 pm.
Rahul Kalate, the NCP (SP) candidate said, “I thought there will be three to four per cent increase in voting because of the way the campaign was fought. Maybe it’s because of missing names of voters that the per centage came down. Anyways, I expect this will go in my favour.”
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
