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Kadi : was a fortified town which, around 1730, was captured by Pilāji Gaekwad from the Mogul governor of Gujarat. Since he was to be succeeded by his eldest son Dāmāji, he gave Kadi to his second son Khanderao as his fief (the third son Pratāp Rao was the ancestor of Sayājirao who became Gaekwad in 1875), this started the branch of Gaekwād’s of Kadi. In 1734, Dāmāji took Baroda & its environs (which Pilāji had taken in 1725) & around 1755-6 took all of Gujarat itself. Khanderao’s son Malharrao entered into a political contract with Dāmāji’s eldest son Govindrao by which he would govern Kadi & sent a regular tribute to Govindrao, but when the tribute Govindrao took back Kadi. When the Gaikwāds established Baroda as their capital, they had first selected Aṇhilwād Pātaṇ as it had once been capital of Hindu Gujarat (c.720-1297) as the centre of their northern prānt (district) which was to consist of eight tālukās: Pātaṇ, Kadi, Vijāpur, Vadnagar, Visnagar, Kheralu, Dehagām, & Ataysuba. But Aṇhilwād or Siddhpur Pātaṇ (capital of Gujarat until 1297) being too far from Baroda (c.150 km), they had settled for Kadi. But soon after Govindrao’s death in 1800, Malharrao instigated a revolt & Govindrao’s son had to call in British help for which he had to cede territory by their treaty of 1802. In 1883, after a tour of this most sensitive of his four prānts, Sayājirao set up the Land (Revenue) Survey & Settlement Department under F.A.H. Elliot (d.1910), his ICS tutor-cum-friend, to deal with the vexed question of barkhāli lands – lands wholly or largely free from taxation, having been rashly granted by earlier rulers or unauthorized officials – for, in addition to ryotwari the British had centralised all authority in their district officer, generally a fresh ICS boy who rode rough-shod over all its inhabitants whatever their social or educational status. In 1883, convinced by the achievements of Tilak & Agarkar in the field of national education, that education & empowerment of panchayats & traditional local bodies are the keystones of development; he introduced free compulsory primary education in Kadi & made it state-wide in 1906. But the fact that they had once been more autonomous kept the thākores (fief-holders) of Kadi always restless regarding their loyalty. In 1894-95, incensed at having failed to entrap Sayājirao through the Bāpat Case, the Resident incited the thākores to revolt on the issue of land settlement. Sayājirao’s reluctance to resort to force led them to believe the Resident had forbidden the use of force & the revolt quickly spread right up to the former state of Idar with thākores & jāgirdārs of those areas joining in. Finally in 1898, the Resident in a show of goodwill ordered a contingent of Baroda army under a British officer to subdue the rebels, over 2000 of whom had by then, holed up in the fortified town of Pilvai near Vijāpur. The rebel leaders were taken to Baroda, & their claims vis-à-vis those of the Gaekwād re-negotiated, naturally favouring them. Sayājirao had to replace Kadi by Mehsāna as his district headquarters.