Praniti Shinde, sitting MLA from Solapur City Central constituency, faces the same anger from the electorate that led her father and former Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde to lose the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
The voters of the Assembly seat are fuming over lack of basic amenities like water and roads. While in most areas, drinking water comes once in four days for about a couple of hours, in others, there has been no supply for over a month. Even in the VVIP area Shindes live in, drinking water is available twice a week. And this, despite the fact that Solapur has three sources of water and an overflowing Ujjani dam.
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Water crisis, however, is only one of the Solapur’s problems. The city with a population of 10 lakh, spanning across three Assembly seats — Solapur City Central, Solapur North and Solapur South — has shoddy roads, overflowing garbage bins and choked gutters. Compounding the problem is lack of job opportunities with most educated youths forced to migrate to Pune, Mumbai and elsewhere in search of livelihood.
Venkatesh Pagdial (32), a resident of Ashok Chowk, said, “Bahut bura haal hain humare Solapur mein…Water is available after every 4-5 days. I don’t know what our elected representatives are doing. I am going to vote for the one who promises to provide us water everyday.”
Pagdial further said Solapur has not seen any industrial growth in decades and educated youths have no jobs. “Our children are forced to stay thousands of miles away. Every family will tell you the same story,” he said.
Many voters feel Praniti did not push civic officials enough for bringing basic amenities to constituency.
Praniti is now conducting rallies in the area, one of which was held in Phalmari area on Wednesday afternoon. “I think I last saw her two-three years back. She rarely visits the area,” said Anuradha Sargam (50), a local resident.
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Veteran CPM leader Narsaiyya Adam, who is contesting against Praniti, said: “The Shindes have ruled Solapur for years, but have failed to ensure even a daily bucket of water for residents,” he said.
Praniti, on her part, put up a brave face. “I have implemented projects worth Rs 1500 crore. I have also set up MPSC and UPSC centres for students besides ensuring 2.5 FSI for chawl residents,” she said.
Conceding that civic amenities were lacking, Praniti says,”In a year’s time, when the NTPC project is completed, Solapur’s water problems will be solved. We will try to give water daily or on alternate days,” she said, adding that she should not be blamed for lack of basic amenities. “It was the job of the civic body. I took up the issues several times with the civic commissioner.”
Praniti sounded confident of making it again. “No election is easy. We are hopeful voters who believed in us will do so again,” she said.
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The Solapur City Central seat has 2.7 lakh voters, of which Telugu and Muslim voters form the majority. The Muslims have traditionally voted for the Congress while the Telugu votes will get divided between Adam and Mahesh Kothe of the Sena, says a political observer. “Praniti will have to convince voters that she will work for them in next term. If the voters are convinced, she can win. Otherwise, the Shinde reign is set to end in Solapur”, he said, refusing to be named.
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
