Mumbai, Nov 9 (IANS): A senior leader of the Yuva Sena and an academician, Dilip A. Karande, died early Friday following prolonged illness, party officials said here Saturday.

He was 56 and is survived by his wife and a son. He breathed his last in a hospital in Malad, a north-west Mumbai suburb, where he was admitted for renal and cardiac problems.

The last rites of Karande, who was troubled with health problems for the past three years, will be held at a crematorium in Malad Saturday afternoon.

Karande was elected to various bodies of the Mumbai University over the past three decades. He was a member of the senate and management council of the varsity.

He along with then Shiv Sena leader Raj Thackeray and party activists had successfully organised Michael Jackson's History tour in Mumbai in 1996.

Earlier, he was an aggressive member of the Shiv Sena student wing, Bharatiya Vidyarthi Sena and later joined the Yuva Sena, headed by Aditya Thackeray, son of Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray.