Not quite, for it is the Ganesh festival that will rule their schedules for all 11 days. While BJP's Pradeep Rawat says his party workers have set up an ambitious target of a 1000 mandals to turn up at, from 6 am till past midnight every day, Mohan Joshi hopes to touch 500, and NCP's Vitthal Tupe says he will match last year's darshan of 350 mandals.

Glad that he could make time to celebrate his birthday on September 13 with a family dinner, Rawat has no time to spare for his family business of software solutions for banking, since his partymen have spent every day since Sunday grappling with figures of voter turn-out and analysing their campaign.

``We want to improve our preparedness for the future,'' he says, though declaring with a wide grin, in the same breath, that these elections will throw up a big surprise.

But festival or not, it is time now to look into his 40-acre land at Hadapsar for Tupe, who declares that sheti is his main occupation. Admitting to a degree of relief that the campaign is finally over, though ``it is natural that niggling doubts remain,'' Tupe, director of the Yeshwant Sahakare Sakhar Karkhana, says he will concentrate on its affairs, which he has ignored for almost a month. He also plans to channelise any free days till the D-Day towards the 450-acre township development project at Magarpatta.

``It feels strange now that the campaign is over,'' says Joshi, relieved that he can now get to bed earlier than 4 am. He describes meeting strangers who said they had prayed for his victory at Pandharpur, Tuljapur and Ajmer.

`I never have any free time and my two children don't let a single day go by without complaining that I'm neglecting them,'' says Joshi, who took his family out to a celebratory dinner at Boat Club on Sunday, and has made up his mind to sleep undisturbed and take in any Hindi movie the first holiday he may miraculously get some day.

Though the heat and dust of the padyatras has settled, Rawat says he will carry the most memorable aspect of his campaign, when 4500 supporters, most strangers to him, turned up in response to a newspaper advertisement appealing to friends of Rawat to participate in the campaign, and temporarily set aside their professional responsibilities, to form the Rawat Brigade, a parallel organisation that threw its energies into the campaign. ``It was overwhelming to meet people I had not seen for years,'' he says.

But for Tupe, there was no cause for rejoicing, with the unexpected demise of a close friend the day before elections, a loss he is still mourning. And on Sunday he rushed to Satara to pay condolences to the family of NCP councillor Levhe.

For these netas, who covered more than 25 kilometres a day in padyatras, like Tupe, who had started a regime of morning walks to cope with the gruelling demands on their health, and Rawat, who skipped dinner, to stay fit, doctor's advice, it is still not time to put up their feet and relax.

Party meetings, Ganesh visits, continue. But interestingly, while Tupe has no idea whether the NCP has a website, and Joshi says he does not spare any time for it, Rawat is turning Net-savvy. Fascinated with his site, which he repeatedly mentions, he now spends at least 30 minutes in cyberspace every day, replying to his m@il at pradeeprawat.com!