mumbai residents here could do with a few ladders to trim the trees that seem to creep right into their bedrooms and they would be happier if people were barred from halfparking their cars on the pavements an impediment to ones leisurely evening walksapart from these pet peeves there is little motivation in this hub of the parsis in dadar east to vote thats probably the reason why many of them dont vote voting hovers around 30 to 35 per cent in ward no 39 which has a voter base of 32000 and covers sharada cinema dadar and matunga railway stations katrak road parsi colony and maheshwari udyanlast time about 13000 voters exercised their franchise this time the residents have fewer reasons to turn out on election day the ward has been reserved for obcs this time and most candidates hail from outside the ward and are unknown to the residents firsttimer raghunath thawai congress hopes to win since his work is centred in this area he counts the easy accessibility of birth and death forms at the ward office among his achievementsgovardhan chauhan bjp is banking on his rss background to see him through specially in pockets like hindu colony where parsis number about 5000 and gujaratis about 8000oldtimer rustom tirandaz who has won thrice from this ward has been forced out because of castebased reservation to antop hill while sitting corporator babubhai bhawanji now with the bjp is contesting from sionwhile thawai counts clearing the pavements of debris and resurfacing the roads among his priorities chauhan is wooing senior citizens who account for a sizable number of votes by promising home delivery of services like supply of civic documents and a citizens vigil squadncps nitin gavand a retired bank official who lives in hindu colony is looking at the larger picture in education and healthcare only about one per cent of those who study in municipal schools make it to graduation he observes and aims at introducing english in all civic schoolsfurther up the parelnaigaum area is a cluster of about 20 closed textile mills including india united digvijay rajkamal spring and gulmohar mills and hospitals like tata memorial wadia and kem also in this region lie bdd chawls bhoiwada bpt hospital and four police quarters water used to a big issue here some years ago but not any more dominated by the shiv sena the opposition parties have propped up largely weaker candidates in most of these wards from 30 to 38the sena is banking on its past performance in upgrading amenities like water sanitation and drainage residents however say that there is room for improvement poor drainage and growing piles of garbage in the narrow house gullies which are peculiar to this area remain a problemmoreover about 50 per cent of the residents live in slums and the rest in decadesold service quarters although there is an urgent need to repair some of these quarters corporators say residents need to be convinced enough