MUMBAI, Jan. 3 -- A delegation of 12 candidates from parties such as the Janata Dal, the MNS, the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA), and the Republican Party of India (Gavai faction), apart from independents, met municipal commissioner Bhushan Gagrani on Friday evening to complain that they were not allowed to fill their nomination forms in Wards 225, 226 and 227 in South Mumbai and demand that they be allowed to file them now. The delegation, led by former MP Haribhau Rathod, accused Maharashtra legislative assembly speaker Rahul Narwekar of deliberately scuttling several candidatures to ensure unopposed victory for his family members-brother Makarand Narwekar, sister-in-law Harshita Narwekar and cousin Gaurvi Shivalkar-who are contesting from the three wards. Rathod, whose son Niraj Rathod, was to contest from Ward 226, has demanded that the CCTV footage be examined to furnish proof of him being threatened by Narwekar at the nomination centre on December 30. A video of this has gone viral, in which Narwekar is seen summoning a senior police officer and asking him to immediately withdraw Rathod's security cover after the latter argued with him at the Returning Officer (RO)'s office. Civic chief Gagrani told HT that as an administrator, he did not have the right to accept nominations after the date and time determined by the Election Commission (EC). "I will submit my report to the EC, and it is for the EC or the courts to take further action on this," he said. "We were sitting right there in the nomination centre and even had valid receipts of payment," said Vaishali Gawde of the RPI (Gavai). "The election officials asked us to wait outside the RO's office, claiming it was crowded inside. Then we were told that we could not file since we were not inside the centre." Baban Mahadik, the official MNS candidate, reiterated this. "We were misled into believing that we could wait outside since we had paid the registration fee," he said. "Later we were told our forms couldn't be accepted." When contacted, the RO claimed the candidates were not in his cabin despite loudspeaker announcements. "About 55 people were in my cabin and filed nominations beyond 5 pm till almost 9 pm," he claimed. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) too protested the "puppeteering" of the election machinery by Narwekar and said that the EC had been "hijacked" by the BJP. The RO rejected the nominations of AAP's Navnath Lalge and the Congress' Mahesh Kanojia due to their failure to submit caste certificates, while other independents withdrew. Puran Doshi, a Congress ex-corporator from Colaba, alleged that the Congress gave a walkover to the Narvekars in the wards, which have multi-crore projects coming up. "The Congress did not put up its own candidates and handed over the wards to alliance partners who couldn't put up a fight," he said....