A portrait of Balasaheb Thackeray looms above Raj’s favourite chair where he holds durbar at home in Shivaji Park. In the next room hangs a framed close-up of Balasaheb holding a pipe, once clicked by cousin turned political rival Uddhav. In a lobby window is propped a small black-and-white of a child Raj on Balasaheb’s lap.

Here in these rooms in the shadow of uncle Balasaheb, on his turf in Shivaji Park, Dadar—the heart of the Shiv Sena’s mass base—the rebel Thackeray and his inner circle strategise how to fill the Park with more people, of more communities, than Balasaheb ever drew, for the first rally on Sunday of the new Sena—Raj’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS).

Handpicked Sainiks are quietly raising this newborn party—there’s a powerful MLA officially still with the Sena, a union lawyer with corporate experience, an ex-deputy leader of the Sena who dug up the Wankhede pitch for Balasaheb in 1991, an ex-chief of a cooperative bank to doctors willing to join a voluntary medical team that Raj will rush to areas of epidemics and disasters.

Spotted in canteens at the RBI, or mingling with unions at the Shiv Sena-controlled Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation is the party’s business-like manager, Shirish Parkar, LLB, MBA. The RBI, UTI, Bank of India, Railways, Airports Authority of India, BMC, insurance companies and teachers’ unions...Parkar’s held meetings with union members of all these organisations to lay the ground for future muscle-flexing. ‘‘We don’t have money to book halls. Even a lunch at a bank canteen can make impact for Raj,’’ says Parkar. ‘‘Our USP is new faces, new technique and developmental politics.’’

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