It is late evening when passersby on the busy Barrister Nath Pai Road in Mumbai’s Ghatkopar area catch sight of something unusual. A man in a turquoise blue T-shirt, his leg in an orthopaedic cast, and resting on a seat on the cart, is waving at them.

The incumbent BJP MLA from Ghatkopar East, Parag Shah is the richest candidate in the Maharashtra Assembly elections with combined assets of Rs 3,367 crore along with his wife. He runs a construction company called Man Infra Construction Limited.

“I slipped and fell at home, fractured my knee joint, and suffered a torn ligament,” Shah tells The Indian Express. “Doctors have advised surgery but with the elections coming up, I cannot afford to waste even a single minute. I have decided to continue campaigning.”

Shah, who replaced Prakash Mehta in 2019 and won the election by more than 50,000 votes, will undergo surgery after voting on November 20. Till then, he is operating from a hospital bed set up in his office in the sales office of his company in Ghatkopar. “I undergo physiotherapy in my office itself. After the injury, I got two hospital beds — one is here in my office and the other has been set up at home,” he says. Shah owns three floors in a high-rise in Mumbai’s Chembur, where he stays with his family.

On November 1, Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Priyanka Chaturvedi highlighted the asset declarations of seven leaders of the ruling Mahayuti alliance in both 2019 and 2024, including Shah whose assets have grown manifold since 2019. At the time, his movable assets along with his wife and children were worth Rs 422.6 crore while immovable assets, including properties in Vile Parle, Ghatkopar, Chembur, and Gujarat, were valued at Rs 79 crore.

Asked about the focus on him because he is the wealthiest candidate, Shah says, “That’s true, but I believe that a person should be rich from his heart. Sometimes politicians say anything just to stay in the limelight.” Shah says since he declared his assets they have grown to Rs 3,800 crore on account of his investments. “Does that mean I earned Rs 500 crore in five days? Yes, but it’s only on paper,” he says with a laugh.

Shah who is confident about retaining the seat has a strong rival in Rakhee Jadhav, the candidate of the Nationalist Congress Party (SP) whose growing popularity may pose him a problem. The MLA has started reaching out to voters on social media. After taking a break for a day after fracturing his knee, Shah started his campaign by visiting a Chhath Puja at Acharya Atre Maidan in his golf cart, followed by stops at housing societies.

“We understood that due to his injury, he would not be able to climb into a jeep, so we arranged a wheelchair and a golf cart for him,” says senior party leader Praveen Chedda. A specially fitted van with a semi-automatic ramp has also been arranged to lift the wheelchair-bound leader. A party worker says they tried different combinations to figure out the best possible way to help Shah move around for campaigning.

Shah says his pitch to voters does not revolve around any one specific issue. “When I contested the civic elections in 2017 or the Assembly elections in 2019, I did not make any commitments to anyone, and in 2024, I am not making any promises. People know that I am an authentic person and that I have come to work for the country,” he says.

Shah’s rival candidate Rakhee Jadhav says, “People know him because of his money and not for his work. He has been very bluntly telling everyone to not expect anything from him as he has employed people to work on his behalf. My clear pitch to the voters is they know that I have worked for them as a corporator for the last 15 years and I will continue to do so.”

Several votes say Jadhav will provide tough competition because of her work as a corporator, while others say the Gujarati population in the constituency will only vote for Shah. Of the 2.4 lakh voters in the constituency, more than 1 lakh are Marathis and more than 57,000 voters are Gujaratis.

“People from Pant Nagar say Jadhav has helped us a lot. Whenever we went to meet her, she was always available. Shah has also been helpful, but we are scared of going to his office for the second time,” says a vegetable vendor, Ram Gupta.

Laxminarayan Rajpal who runs a coaching institute in the area also speaks of the work Jadhav has done. “Everyone is impressed with her. She has ensured that the problems of the people in her constituency are resolved, so there is a strong belief that people from Pant Nagar, Vikhroli Cross Road, and Naidu Colony will vote for her. But there is a large Gujarati population here that will ensure Shah doesn’t fall short on votes.”