30 March,2025 08:03 AM IST | Mumbai | Arpika Bhosale
Rahool Kanal was leaving after paying respect and homage late Baba Siddique at Maqba heights. File pic/Satej Shinde
On March 23, a new political figure emerged seemingly out of nowhere. His claim to fame? Vandalising a club known for hosting artistes, especially standup comedians. This was Rahool Kanal, a "Bandra boy" whose Instagram account (@rahulnarainkanal) tells us the tale of an ambitious politician and friend of the Khans and Dutts.
Kanal is as Bandra as it can get - a student of St Stanislaus High School and of Shrimati Mithibai Motiram Kundnani College of Commerce & Economics, commonly known as MMK College, Kanal's world extended at the most to Khar.
Now with Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde's party youth wing, Kanal is said to have had his first introduction to politics as a member of the National Students Union of India (NSUI), the Congress' student wing, in Mumbai University.
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Kanal, who hails from a Sindhi family, first began his association with high-ranking Congress leaders like Gurudas Kamat and eventually Sunil Dutt as well as Priya and Sanjay Dutt. The Bandra connection eventually led him to the late Baba Siddique.
A close family friend of the Kanal's tells us that in fact he would often introduce himself to people as Siddique's other son. "He would often say that Baba sir considers me as a son and he would often use this leverage for social capital and increasing the family's real estate holdings in Bandra," says the friend.
He was also one of the youngest trustees of the Shirdi Trust, which brought him in close contact with other celebrities and politicians to set up arrangements for their visit.
"Soon he was wining and dining with Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan and anyone who is anyone in Bandra," says the journalist. Bearing this out, his Instagram feed has plenty of selfies with celebs.
One of the family's Bandra properties was Kanal's chiropractor father Narayan's clinic, which was quite famous in the '80s and '90s. His father's vocation also got Kanal in close proximity to Matoshree, where he was regular as his father treated the late Balasaheb Thackeray.
"Even though his first foray into politics was with the Congress, Kanal always had had good political roots. He very good friends with the Thackeray family; it is where his association with not just Aaditya but also Eknath Shinde happened. In fact, he often used to also stay overnight there - his father and Balasaheb were that close," says another journalist who has seen the rise of Kanal's career from the Congress to his Shiv Sena defection. He was in fact the Yuva Sena's core committee member as well as the education committee member (BMC) for nine years from 2009.
"When Kanal defected from the Congress he clawed his way up into the inner coterie of the Yuva Sena with the likes of Varun Sardesai and all the other children of the Sena leadership. Aaditya was already a childhood friend," says another journalist. "Kanal and Aaditya were soon inseparable; at the time it was a big flex of the former and he capitalised on it very well," they add.
Many said the news that Kanal was one of the lieutenants who allied with Eknath Shinde in 2022 when the Shiv Sena split was not unexpected. The then 37-year-old Kanal had become disillusioned with Uddhav Thackeray's leadership and had also begun to distance himself from Aaditya, who in turn had become harder for Kanal to access.
Sanjay Patil, who has written a PhD paper on the rise of the Shiv Sena in the '90s, feels that while Uddhav and Aaditya have been leaders in their own right, the one place they made a bad call was in putting together the Yuva Sena. "The Yuva Sena, as an idealogy, clashed with the original idea of the shakhas. A lot of the Yuva Sena were unable to connect to the Marathi manoos from the chawls of Mumbai. Like any party, there were a few strategic mistakes. In this case, the lack of understanding of who they must let in to be a part of the Yuva Sena, is a decision that still haunts them," he says.
Independent journalist Varun Singh believes that Kanal has "awesome networking skills" and, like any politician, has timed the vandalism to his advantage. "Kanal has serious political aspirations and it is well known that he wants to enter the Assembly. It was a strategic move on his part to react to what was being said about Shinde. Otherwise he may have been seen as someone in whose backyard, his party leader is insulted with no repurcussion," says Singh.
A few days after getting bail, an even more aggressive Kanal told the media, when asked if it was appropriate that he took matters into his own hands, "You [Kunal Kamra] will be taught a lesson for what you have done, and not only you but the people who have put you up to it. This is a paid conspiracy and the police will investigate this," he said. When egged on by reporters about the violence he and his party workers unleashed, he adds, "Ye trailer tha, picture abhi baki hai [this is just the trailer, the movie is yet to come]; you will get a good lesson - Shiv
Sena style."
With inputs from Sanjeev Shivadekar
