Right from the postal ballot and first round of counting, Shahu Maharaj led over his nearest rival and sitting MP Sanjay Mandlik of the Shiv Sena, and his lead surged in every round. (File Photo)
TWO members of royal families, both descendants of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, won from Kolhapur and Satara respectively. While Shahu Maharaj Chhatrapati secured a decisive victory and was leading right from first round, Chhatrapati Udayanraje Bhosale had to sweat it out till the last round.
In Kolhapur, especially, the Congress has lot to cheer as it will have a representative in Lok Sabha first time after 25 years.
You have exhausted your monthly limit of free stories.
Read more stories for free with an Express account.
Right from the postal ballot and first round of counting, Shahu Maharaj led over his nearest rival and sitting MP Sanjay Mandlik of the Shiv Sena, and his lead surged in every round.
Shahu Maharaj, the descendant of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, approached the counting centre in Kolhapur, where enthusiastic Congress workers smeared him with “gulal”. He asked them to wait until the counting was finished, saying, “Please wait for some more time.”
After the victory, Shahu Maharaj, sporting a big smile, said, “This victory belongs to the voters of Kolhapur who have posed faith in me. This is a victory of the ideology of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj and Rajarshi Shahu Maharaj..I was leading in all the assembly segments and finally secured a decisive mandate.”
Shahu Maharaj polled 7,50,323 votes while Sanjay Mandlik managed 5,97,014 votes. Shahu Maharaj won by a margin of 1,53,309 votes.
Congress leader and former minister Satej Patil, the key architect of party’s revival in Kolhapur, said, ”It was a big day for Congress in Kolhapur. At the end of the 14th round itself, it became clear that Shahu Maharaj would win, and the momentum continued. Shahu Maharaj’s victory was among the biggest ones in Maharashtra.”
Story continues below this ad
Satej Patil, who had recommended the name of Shahu Maharaj from Kolhapur seat during seat-sharing talks, said, “It was Shahu Maharaj who was keen to contest on a Congress ticket. And we backed him. He is very popular among the people of Kolhapur. There is a lot of respect for the descendants of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj and Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj. We did not doubt that once Shahu Maharaj is fielded, we will win hands down,” he said.
Emphasising that they had planned the campaigning to perfection, Satej Patil said, “We wanted to encash on Shahu Maharaj’s popularity and standing among the people of Kolhapur. We planned his campaigning in a perfect way, leaving no loopholes. At his age, Shahu Maharaj also showed a lot of gumption and courage to criss-cross the length and breadth of Kolhapur to meet and interact with the voters.”
Shiv Sena candidate Sanjay Mandlik, who was the sitting MP, shot himself in the foot after he raised doubts as to whether Shahu Maharaj was the real heir, said Congress leaders. ”He is not the real heir to the royal seat,” Mandlik had said.
Satej Patil said Mandlik’s comment angered the people of Kolhapur who came out in big numbers to vote for Shahu Maharaj. Kolhapur had registered around 70 per cent voting. “The people of Kolhapur did not like the remarks made by Mandlik against Shahu Maharaj who is highly respected. They have given Shiv Sena and Mahayuti a befitting reply,” he said.
Story continues below this ad
Congress’s Udaysingrao Gaikwad won five Lok Sabha elections in a row from Kolhapur from 1980 to 1996. Sadashivrao Mandlik won in 1998 and 1999, and he later won as a Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) candidate in 2004 and as an Independent in 2009.
“The Congress is making a comeback in Kolhapur. We finally have an MP from Kolhapur after 25 years,” Satej Patil said.
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
