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This is an archive article published on October 20, 2014

Despite odds, a consolation

Chavan trounces seven-time Cong MLA Vilas Patil-Undalkar, who fought as Independent.

What was widely believed to be a close contest in Karad South constituency ended in a comfortable victory for former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan who was fighting his first assembly election as he trounced seven-time sitting MLA Vilas Patil-Undalkar by over 14,000 votes. Chavan in fact stood tall in Western Maharashtra as Congress bigwigs such as Harshvardhan Patil and Satej Patil, who were considered sure-short winners, were decimated on poll turf.

Minutes after his victory was announced, Chavan wasted no time in debunking the Modi wave. “Modi asked for a simple majority in Maharashtra. BJP could not even get near the simple majority… Modi has been clearly rejected by the people of Maharashtra,” he said.

Chavan, however, accepted responsibility for the Congress’s poor performance. “I accept the responsibility for the defeat of my party and will work for the betterment of the Congress,” he said.

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He sounded surprised by his victory margin. “I was in the fray after a long time and it took a lot of effort to reconnect with the masses. In the end, it was a comfortable victory,” he said.

Chavan won around 74,000 votes  while Undalkar, a Congress rebel, finished second with 59,000 votes. Atul Bhosale of the BJP came third with around 58,000 votes.

Undalkar said he was undone by ‘urban voting’. “In Karad city area, I could get only 6,000 votes whereas Chavan got close to 50,000 votes,” he said. Undalkar is credited with pushing the development of rural areas — water tanks, better roads and toilet facilities.

Chavan is fondly addressed as ‘Baba’, both by supporters and rivals,  in Karad. Many said they voted for him as he was the “Nishkalank and Swachh Manoos” (Mr Clean).

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Chavan had the support of a wide spectrum of voters, including the Muslims.  “The Muslim community in Karad has been Congress supporters for long. We have nearly 65,000 votes and more than 70 per cent had voted,” said Congress leader Shakil Kotwal.

Chavan’s wife, Satvasheela Chavan, who is credited with holding the fort in Karad as her husband campaigned for other Congress candidates, said, “I knew he would win… Everyone knows he is Mr Clean and there was no reason why they wouldn’t vote for him.”

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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