Mumbai, July 26: Singer Abhijeet Sawant, the original Indian Idol, today joined the Shiv Sena three months before the Assembly polls, raising its hopes of wresting young Marathi voters back from Raj Thackeray’s party.

Sawant, 28, the son of a lower middle class civic employee, had created TV history in 2004 by winning the first edition of the Indian Idol talent hunt and then launched a career in playback singing.

“I was born in Maharashtra, and so the Shiv Sena was a natural choice for me. I felt I could do more for society if I joined a political party,” he said. “No decision has been taken yet on contesting elections. Whatever the party asks me to do, I will.”

Sawant did owe Bal Thackeray a debt of gratitude: during the final stages of Indian Idol, the Shiv Sena chief had appealed to his cadre to send text messages supporting the Mumbai singer.

Sena executive president Uddhav Thackeray made it clear the party would use the singer’s popularity to attract young Marathas.

“We will give him responsibility; we will not let his popularity go waste. He can relate to youngsters well and has made a place in their hearts,” Uddhav said.

The Sena has lost a chunk of its traditional youth vote to Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), which won more than one lakh votes at each of the 12 seats it contested in the Lok Sabha elections.

Raj faced an embarrassment today: four party activists from Andheri were arrested on the charge of gang-raping a 13-year-old girl and remanded in police custody till July 28. The MNS alleged a conspiracy to defame it but expelled the four.

Sawant joins the Sena at a time it has thrown itself into agitations ahead of the Assembly elections. Its aggressive street protests against power tariff hikes by Reliance Energy in Mumbai prompted an alarmed Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) government to ask the power regulator to roll back the rise.

Bal Thackeray’s party has also got two disgruntled MNS leaders to publicly condemn Raj and join the Sena. They are former MNS women’s wing chief and Lok Sabha candidate Shweta Parulkar and Pramod Mahajan’s brother Prakash.

Sena ally BJP too received a fillip today with the former Congress MLA from Vidarbha, Nana Patole, joining the party. The two-time MLA from Gondia was defeated by the NCP’s Praful Patel in the Lok Sabha elections. BJP general secretary Gopinath Munde said a seat pact with the Sena would be announced in the next 8-10 days. “The Sena will contest 171 seats; the BJP will put up candidates from 117 seats,” Munde said.

He added that the BJP would hold a jail bharo from August 9 to protest the state government’s failure to end farmer suicides, power shortage and price rise.

NCP chief Sharad Pawar, jolted by his party’s poor showing in the general election, will personally interview several prospective candidates suggested by party units, especially for western Maharashtra seats, over the next weekend.