The Shiv Sena has decided to vote for NDA nominee Najma Heptulla in the vice-presidential election scheduled for Friday.

Sources told The Indian Express that Sena chief Bal Thackeray took a decision to this effect following a telephone call from BJP President Rajnath Singh late on Thursday night.

Heptulla had also called Sena Executive President Uddhav Thackeray earlier to seek support for herself. Though the victory of UPA candidate Hamid Ansari is a foregone conclusion, the Sena support to Heptulla has an assumed importance because of its implication

for the party’s alliance with the BJP.

Indications of the Sena finally voting for Heptulla were evident as party MPs started pouring into the Capital on Thursday. The sources said the Sena leadership had advised all of them to converge here by Friday morning well before the vice-presidential election got underway.

A meeting of Sena MPs has also been convened for Friday morning where they will be informed of Bal Thackeray’s decision.

The sources also said chief of the BJP’s Maharashtra unit Nitin Gadkari and party’s national general secretary Gopinath Munde had been kept out of the loop on the issue and told to confine their differences with the alliance partner to the state.

Meanwhile, the Bahujan Samaj Party has decided to back UPA nominee Hamid Ansari on Friday.