Five mandals in Pune hold man — honour, precedence. On Anant Chaturdashi the visarjan procession moves in their order and no other, and it does not begin at all until the first of them sets out.
This confuses visitors, because the order has nothing to do with which mandal draws the biggest crowd. Shreemant Dagdusheth Halwai is far more visited than most of the five, and is not among them.
The order
In sequence, with the year each was founded:
- Kasba Ganpati (1893) — Kasba Peth. The gramdaivat, the presiding deity of the city.
- Tambdi Jogeshwari (1893) — Budhwar Peth, attached to one of Pune’s oldest temples.
- Guruji Talim (1887) — Ganpati Chowk, founded jointly by Hindu and Muslim families.
- Tulshibaug (1901) — Tulshibaug, known for its tall idol.
- Kesariwada (1894) — Narayan Peth, at Lokmanya Tilak’s own home.
Where the precedence came from
Guruji Talim predates the public festival itself — it was founded in 1887, before Ganeshotsav was organised as a street celebration. The rest cluster in the 1890s, the years when a household rite was deliberately turned into a mass public event.
Kesariwada is the clearest link to that shift: it sits at the Kesari Wada, home of Bal Gangadhar Tilak and of the newspaper he founded. The organised public Ganeshotsav as it is now recognised traces directly to that address.
Kasba Ganpati leads because it is the gramdaivat. Pune’s presiding deity goes first, and the city follows.
What it means if you are there
The practical consequence is timing. Because the sequence is fixed, the procession is not a free-for-all — it is a queue, and a very long one. Mandals further back can wait many hours for their turn to move, and the last of them often reach the immersion ghats after sunrise the next day.
If you want to see the Manache five specifically, they pass early. If you arrive in the evening you will be watching the mandals that follow them.