Rahul Narvekar to withdraw

The decision of Shiv Sena nominee Rahul Narvekar to withdraw from the fray in the state legislative council elections, which ensured that the nominations will take place unopposed, has led to speculations on whether the Sena leadership was kept in the dark. Narvekar, the son of former corporator Suresh Narvekar and an aide of Yuva Sena chief Aaditya Thackeray, was the second party candidate in the fray. There were 10 candidates for nine seats including Narvekar and Neelam Gorhe (Shiv Sena), Shivajirao Deshmukh, Chandrakant Raghuvanshi and Haribhau Rathod (Congress), Hemant Takle, Kiran Pawaskar and Anand Thakur (NCP) and Vinod Tawade and Pandurang Phundkar (BJP). The presence of a 10th candidate in the ring had led to speculations about horse trading and vote splits in the elections. However, though Narvekar, who had unsuccessfully contested from the Colaba assembly constituency in 2004 and for the Rajya Sabha in 2009, withdrew from the contest on Thursday, Sena president Uddhav Thackeray seemed to be in the dark over it. Narvekar is a spokesperson of the Yuva Sena and is one of the few Sena leaders eloquent in English. Narvekar is also the son-in-law of senior NCP leader and former minister Ramraje Naik Nimbalkar and the brother of citizens corporator from Colaba, Makarand Narvekar. The BJP, which is presently locked in an acrimonious exchange of words with the Sena over its overtures to the rival Raj Thackeray led MNS, was peeved at the Sena's decision to put up a 10th candidate considering the inability of the saffron alliance to muster up numbers for its victory. In case the elections had taken place, each candidate would have needed 29 votes to sail through whereas the Sena and the BJP have 45 and 46 votes, not counting independents. The BJP had also reached out to the MNS and the Peasants and Workers Party (PWP) to muster additional votes.