MUMBAI: A Rs 353 crore gap between the richest and the poorest. Brains to match political brawn. Age no bar. In Maharashtra, contradictions and similarities are together contributing colour to the pollscape.
Take for instance Karad (South) constituency. All the aspirants here, including former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan, can claim to be “qualified”, armed as they are with fancy degrees. Rivalling the former Congress CM in the brains department are Shiv Sena’s Ajeenkya Patil, BJP’s Atul Bhosale and Independent Vilas Patil Undalkar.
Chavan has an engineering degree from the University of California, Berkeley. He worked with NASA before joining politics in 1991. Patil, a management graduate from Richmond College in UK and an alumnus of London School of Economics, is known as an education baron. Son of a senior Congressman and Bihar governor D Y Patil, Ajeenkya runs the state’s largest private educational institute. Bhosale, a medical practitioner, is grandson of yesteryear’s Congress stalwart Yashwantrao Mohite. The veteran Undalkar, a seven time MLA who rebelled because of Chavan’s candidature, is a law graduate.
Apart from Karad (South), the other high profile constituencies are in Mumbai, from where the state’s three wealthiest candidates are contesting. BJP’s Mohit Kamboj, a first-time candidate from Dindoshi, is the state’s richest contender with a declared asset of Rs 353.10 crore. He is followed by BJP’s Mangal Prabhat Loadha and Samajwadi Party’s Abu Asim Azmi. Lodha, who has assets to the tune of Rs 198 crore, is contesting for the fifth consecutive time from high-profile Malabar Hill. Azmi is contesting from a slum pocket, Shivaji Nagar-Mankhurd, for the second consecutive time.
His declared asset is Rs 156 crore.
R R Patil of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Geeta Gawli of Akhil Bhartiya Sena (ABS) are among the “poor” prominent candidates. They have declared assets of Rs 1.10 crore each. While Patil is a former Home Minister, Geeta is the daughter of jailed gangster Arun Gawli. Narayan Pawar, a CPI (M) candidate from Andheri (West) in Mumbai, is the poorest with assets of Rs 15,924.
A Congress candidate from Shirol in Kolhapur S R Patil, 94, is the oldest in the state. Patil is back in the running after winning three consecutive elections from 1957 and then taking a very long break. He returned to the Assembly in 1999 from Shirol. He again took a break in 2004, but returned to the House in 2009. Patil is a Class VII pass, but believes that others can learn lessons from him in fitness and work ethics. He works for 12 hours a day and does not suffer from any age-related problems such as blood pressure or weakness.
Patil set up a sugar mill after he took a break in 1971. The mill, Shree Datta Sahakari Sakhar Karkhana, employs 5,000 people. It is known to pay the highest rates to sugarcane farmers.