Off the highway from Nagpur toward east Maharashtra’s Naxal pocket of Chandrapur district, is a little town dearly in love with elections. Here, on little-understood Chimur’s strip of main road, jostle 22 candidates, their vehicles and donkeys on a diet of campaign pamphlets.The town is not important enough to have its own railway station. There’s no municipal council — not even a fire brigade service. Yet it has pitched the state’s maximum candidates among 288 seats for the October 13 battle.The Congress truck looms over all, splitting ears to noise that ‘‘Sonia has arrived.’’ Rickshaws of 13 Indepedents (at Rs 300 per day) demand votes for a comb, bell, frock, slate, road-roller, axe, book and two candles. So, one EVM per booth won’t do. For 209 polling stations, Chimur has 418 EVMs or double ballot units.‘‘First, we had 37 applications, 33 were cleared,’’ sighs a tired P.L. Sormare, returning officer for Chimur Assembly constituency.Soon, 11 of the 33 enthusiasts disappeared. ‘‘I rejected offers of Rs 10 lakh to withdraw,’’ says NCP rebel Dada Dahikar (50). The Defence Studies professor says: ‘‘The NCP did not give me a ticket, so here I am!’’ Dahikar’s axe, he says, symbolises ‘‘revolution’’.Revolution is history in Chimur. Activists burnt its tehsil office in 2001 to demand district status and the Congress candidate’s affidavit cites ‘‘the tehsil burning case’’ on his criminal record. On August 16, 1942, it was roused to Gandhi’s Quit India call and several died in police firing. Only 28 women and 12 men — freedom fighters of that era — survive to tell the story.‘‘We vote in large numbers because every house is politically conscious,’’ says Prabhakar Joshi (78), adjusting his Gandhi cap.Congress’s sitting MLA Dr Avinash Warjukar — a diploma-holder in homoeopathy and owner of six schools — hired trucks, jeeps, handcarts. His expense till October 2 is the highest: Rs 1.56 lakh. ‘‘Only ex-CM Vilasrao Deshmukh came once to campaign for my brother,’’ grumbles Satish Warjukar. In 1999, his brother won by 700 votes.But enthusiasm for democracy has not meant development. ‘‘Water scarcity, roads, irrigation.all problems because we don’t have real leaders,’’ says sarpanch Hemant Jambhule.
