Chavan puts up a brave front in his maiden Assembly contest

KARAD: Less than 24 hours before polling begins on Wednesday, former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan is out in the hot October sun, sorting out last minute tangles in his constituency.

There is not much flurry of activity at his home, where a handful of workers are gathered, and they all reflect on his personality — cool, calm, collected and seemingly not bothered about the outcome of this maiden election Chavan is contesting to the legislative Assembly.

When Chavan finally arrives, he seems tired, listless and, dare one say, dismal and resigned.

But that is by no means an admission of defeat, for there is a bright side to his high-profile contest. Narendra Modi was scheduled to hold a rally here on Monday, but cancelled at the last minute. Chavan had scheduled his own closing campaign a couple of hours later, to be able to give an adequate reply to any charges that Modi might have raised, but that proved unnecessary.

The enthusiastic crowds at his rally have perked up his campaign managers, and Chavan has learnt that Modi had some doubts about the credentials of the BJP candidate in the fray. So that is one competitor out of the way.

The Shiv Sena hardly has a presence here, though the candidate contesting against him is Ajinkya Patil, son of educationist DY Patil, a Congressman and appointed governor of Bihar by the UPA government. “But he seemed to have a grudge against me for not clearing some file of his and he is a new-found friend of Uddhav Thackeray’s. I do not think he will make much of a dent,” said Chavan.

The man who might, however, is the seven-time legislator Vilaskaka Undalkar, who was denied a ticket by the Congress high command this time, to accommodate Chavan. But the man who was CM for four troubled years is quite proud of the fact that the official NCP candidate has split from his party and offered him support.

But no one can be sure if that will offset the NCP’S support to the Congress rebel. Chavan could be worried about that, but he hides his concern well, even as he calls up trouble-makers in his constituency to ask them their point of view.

There seem to be few pretensions to the man as he introduces himself as only ‘Prithviraj Chavan’, to one such person, and asks politely if he can drop by his home for ten minutes for a discus sion. “But you don’t have to go out of the way, I just wanted to know the other point of view because I will otherwise have only a one sided picture of the solution.” The other party does not seem too enthused, and he lets it be.

It is this lack of assertion that had annoyed his own party leg islators throughout his term as chief minister, but paradoxically that also makes him popular — his staff show him a clipping from a newspaper which says a recent survey revealed that a majority of the women in the state prefer him to anybody else, including Ajit Pawar and Raj Thackeray, as chief minister.

But Chavan’s reaction to that is typically low key. Then he says as coolly, “Sharad Pawar could side with any and every realignment after the elections, but one with the Congress will now be impossible.”

Tea and biscuits arrive – they substitute for lunch that he has had to skip while sorting out more important and troubling issues His home is crawling with party workers and more television crew looking for a last salute before they find a new hero. Bravely, he obliges them all.