Setback for Sena, Rahul Narvekar pulls out of council poll race

The Shiv Sena suffered a severe setback when its spokesperson and close aide of Aditya Thackeray, Rahul Narvekar unilaterally pulled out of the election to the legislative council.

Narvekar kept everybody in the dark and suddenly pulled out of the race thereby ensuring that the nominees, including Vinod Tawde of the BJP, are elected unopposed. "We made a big mistake in giving importance to Rahul in our party. He is ungrateful," said a senior Sena leader.

Narvekar, son of former corporator Suresh Narvekar, was the second party candidate in the fray. There were 10 candidates for nine seats.

The candidates are 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.

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 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 Raj Thackeray led MNS, was peeved at the Sena's decision to put up a tenth 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.Setback for Sena, Narvekar pulls out of council poll race