A onetime candidate for a Toronto council seat says he withdrew from the race after being threatened by people seeking to run a rival candidate in the Oct. 25 municipal election.

Kumar Nadarajah, who runs a Tamil radio station in Scarborough, placed second in his 2006 bid to unseat longtime incumbent Raymond Cho (Ward 42, Scarborough-Rouge River). He planned another try for office in 2010 and filed nomination papers in January.

But soon after, Nadarajah said, he received threatening phone calls from men who urged him to resign. He quit the race Jan. 13.

“They said: ‘Well, we’re putting our candidate in,’ " he said in a recent interview. “We want our candidate on the scene and we want to have some political agenda there.’ "

Nadarajah said he withdrew because he feared for his safety and for his family.

“They will jeopardize my business,” he said, recounting what the callers told him. “Or they will threaten my business. Or they will throw stones at my house. Or they will smash my car.”

He would not identify the men or organization that threatened him, but another candidate in Ward 42 said it was members of the high-profile Canadian Tamil Congress.

Namu Ponnambalam, 45, a pharmacist assistant, said Nadarajah’s supporters told him that the congress pressured the former candidate to back out. The supporters told him this, he said, because they wanted to throw their support behind Ponnambalam and wondered if he too would withdraw if pressured.

Ponnambalam said several members of the Canadian Tamil Congress are running for council and school board in Scarborough and Markham, two areas with sizeable Tamil populations.

The group denied that it threatened Nadarajah and warned that it would take legal action against Ponnambalam unless he withdrew the statement.

“We have absolutely nothing to do with this accusation,” said congress spokesman David Poopalapillai. “We never spoke to this fellow [Nadarajah].”

Poopalapillai said the Canadian Tamil Congress was not endorsing any candidates in the election.

But Nadarajah said the “chosen” candidate referred to in the threats is Neethan Shan, 31, a York Region school board trustee in Markham who is vying to become a Toronto councillor.

Shan, a longtime Canadian Tamil Congress member, called the allegations “unfounded”.

“If people are making allegations like that, they should make [them] directly to the law enforcement or the police," he said. “It looks more like a targeted attempt to disturb my campaign.”

Prior to withdrawing, Nadarajah said, he thought he had a good shot at winning the ward after getting 3,683 votes to Cho’s 7,480 in 2006.

“I wanted to run,” he said. “My volunteers wanted me to run. My supporters wanted me to run."

Nadarajah also ran for office in 2003, when he and Shan tried unsuccessfully to become York Region District School Board trustee for Wards 7 and 8. Shan eventually was elected in 2006.

Scarborough-Rouge River is an ethnically diverse riding tucked in Toronto’s northeastern corner. It’s home to two new housing developments aimed at young families. But residents complain that basic city services — schools, traffic lights and road signs — lag behind those downtown. According to Statistics Canada, the average family income is lower than the Toronto average and the unemployment and crime rates are higher.

As a result, Cho, 73, is considered vulnerable. Seven candidates are challenging the longtime councillor. Three are Tamil Canadians.

The Canadian Tamil Congress took an active role in the 2006 Toronto municipal campaign, but is not endorsing candidates this year, Poopalapillai said. The non-profit group, which has about 1,000 members, has chapters in cities across Canada. Its head office is in Scarborough.

On a national level, the congress took a hard line against the Sri Lankan government in the final months of the civil war with Tamil Tigers in 2009, urging Ottawa to order sanctions against Sri Lanka and boycott products from the country. It has also been at the forefront of assisting Tamil boat people who have landed in British Columbia.

In Scarborough, Ponnambalam said he and Nadarajah are moderate Tamils who prefer to distance themselves from the politics in Sri Lanka. Their efforts to stay neutral, they said, have put them at odds with Tamils who hold more activist views.

Both Nadarajah and Ponnambalam were opposed to the Tamil protests last year that shut down the Gardiner Expressway.