Milind Narvekar now Sena secretary

In what is seen as a leg-up for Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray’s personal assistant Milind Narvekar, he was appointed as the party’s secretary in the national executive held on Tuesday.

However, whispers claim that while Narvekar was in the reckoning for a Rajya Sabha nomination, he was being placated with an organisational post.

Seen as Uddhav’s gatekeeper and Man Friday, Narvekar’s name had done the rounds for a legislative council seat a few years ago. However, while Narvekar could not be reached for comment, a Shiv Sena leader pointed to how the secretary’s post carried great organisational heft in a cadre-based party like the Shiv Sena.

The party grapevine has it that Narvekar, seen with Uddhav at public functions, had met his boss in the early 1990s seeking the post of an upashakha pramukh from Malad, but was picked as his assistant. Narvekar’s clout then rose gradually and he emerged as a power centre in the Sena.

During Congress- NCP regime, Narvekar even led delegations to meet government functionaries and was said to have negotiated with the state when the Sena was in a confrontation over removing late Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray’s funeral platform at Shivaji Park.

Since 2004, Narvekar has been blamed by leaders ranging from Bhaskar Jadhav, Raj Thackeray, Narayan Rane and former MP Mohan Rawle (who has since returned to the Sena after a fleeting stint with the NCP in 2014), for their decision to quit the party.

Senior leaders recall how Narvekar would screen visitors outside the Shivaji Park flat where Uddhav had shifted when the Thackeray residence of Matoshree in Bandra East was being renovated in the 1990s.

In 2010, the Pune police recorded Narvekar’s conversation with Sena MLC Neelam Gorhe, where he was allegedly instructing her to instigate violence during a bandh to protest the shifting of Dadoji Konddeo’s statue from Lal Mahal.

In May 2017, public works minister Eknath Shinde had set the cat among the pigeons on Narvekar’s birthday. Narvekar’s image was larger than that of his boss in an advertisement by Shinde in a Marathi daily, giving rise to gossip about if he had managed to come out of Uddhav’s shadows.