Chavan neighbours in Karad get electricity after 50 yrs

Slum-dwellers just opposite ex-CM’s house say they have been agitating for power connections for long.

Karad | October 11, 2014 10:58 AM IST

4 min read

Last month, 19-year-old Ashwini Shinde, who lives with her family in a 10X10 feet hut located right opposite former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan’s residence at Patan Colony in Karad, was preparing for he second year B.com exam. Unlike her school days and even the past three years of college life when she was forced to study in the flickering dim-lit of a “diya,” Aswhini does not have to strain her eyes. The newly installed tubelight provides just enough light for her to study without much problem.

“All my school life I had to study in darkness. During day time, it was a little better, but in the evenings, it used to really get horrible,” says Ashwini. Since over a fortnight, her life has change drastically. “Our decades of dark days seem to have gone for ever. We all have electricity in our huts… I am happy I will be able to complete my graduation in ‘brighter’ days,” she says.

Bhagyashree Patil, a first-year student, says, “A few months back, when I met the CM at his residence and requested him to do something for us, he merely said…ho, ho, ho, ho”.

Like Ashwini and Bhagyashree, several students in this slum, located exactly 13 steps from the compound wall of Chavan’s residence and divided by a tattered road, are in an ecstatic mood.

At the same time, there are many who use angry words against Chavan for promising but doing nothing to dispel years of darkness from their lives.

The most vocal of them is 25-year-old Sharad Kengar, a civil engineer. “In past three years, we met the chief minister several times at his residence and even at Mantralaya. But he had a standard reply: Mee baghto, mee karto…(I will see… I will do it),” Kengar says, adding that they met Chavan even when he was an MP and a Union minister. “But besides promising, Chavan has failed to do nothing. I myself became a civil engineer after studying in the darkness in my hut. Like me, every other student has suffered the same plight,” he says.

Vishwal Waghmare (28), a commerce graduate, says, “If he has done nothing for us, why should we vote for him? His family kept us in dark for more than 50 years,” Waghmare says. His view is shared by most of the youngsters who mobbed this correspondent outside their huts on Monday.

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Yet another youth Deepak Jadhav says,”Over the years, we submitted several memorandums to the CM and also a CD of our plight, but nothing changed.
I will certainly not vote for him.”

Life changed for the hutment-dwellers over a fortnight back – just before the poll code came into force – after the MSEDCL installed electricity meters outside their huts. The slum-dwellers credit this to Bhagwan Vairat, president of the Zopadpatti Suraksha Dal.

“On August 22, we carried out a morcha to local MSEDCL office. We warned them if they don’t provide electricity to the slum-dwellers, we will gherao them or blacken their face. The trick worked. About 15 days, over 40 huts here have got electricity meters,” says Vairat.

Vairat blames the plight of slum-dwellers on power politics. “The MSECDL gave lame excuses despite the fact that these slum-dwellers had been living there for as many as 70 years. Even the government norms stipulate that slum-dwellers living at one place before 1995 and 2000 should get all amenities,” he says. What is shocking, says Vairat, is that Chavan family has been at the helm since 1960, yet they did not care for the people who are their neighbours.

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Dismissing the allegations, Anand Patil, MLA and Chavan’s campaign manager, says, “Actually, this was the job of the Karad Municipal Council. It is not in our control and hence we could do little.”

The Vilas Patil-Undalkar camp also blames the politics of the area. “Chavan family has been power for four decades. It has to answer why for years, their neighbours did not electricity,” says Hanumant M, a supporter.

MSEDCL officials say the slum-dwellers did not have residential proof, a claim denied by Vairat.

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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