Ratnagiri: It’s a flashback for the residents of the coastal belt of Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg. In 2014, Narayan Rane, a veteran politician from Sindhudurg, was contesting the state assembly elections against the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena, then undivided, on a Congress ticket from Kudal in Sindhudurg.
A decade on, Rane, now with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is back in the region’s political fray as a Lok Sabha candidate, but this time, part of the Shiv Sena — the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) faction — is his rival, while the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena is on his side.
However, until even last week, the Shinde-led Sena was a rival, too.
The Shinde Sena was in a contest with Rane to get the seat within the ruling Mayayuti alliance — comprising the BJP, the Shinde-led Shiv Sena and Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) — and had to concede at the eleventh hour.
But, Rane is hardly perturbed about his equation with either of the Shiv Senas or the impact it will have on his political fortunes.
Finishing a home-cooked lunch of millet bhakri, okra, unpolished rice, and plain dal, he declared that this is an “easy election” for him.
He added that he wanted it to be his last and that five years on, he would rather spend his time managing his business empire ranging from construction to hospitality.
“The MP (Vinayak Raut), who was there for 10 years, got elected because of Modi (PM Narendra Modi) saheb. This time, I will say with certainty it will be difficult for the rival candidate to save his deposit,” Rane, Union minister of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME), told ThePrint after lunch in Ratnagiri Wednesday.
Rane’s confidence stems from two things. One, he said, is because “Konkan considers me family”. He talked about how, even as Union minister, he visits his home district Sindhudurg at least twice a month.
And the second, and more significant reason, he believes is that this time Modi is backing him. “Today, among the people of the country and outside, Modi is seen as a popular capable personality, and his party has given me candidature. So the votes will go to the BJP,” Rane said.
His conviction in Modi’s name being able to deliver a win is despite the fact that, on its own, without Rane’s support, the BJP has little presence in the Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg region.
But, the Union minister, perhaps, has a larger goal — retaining his position in the Modi cabinet, something his proponents are using to set him apart from his rival, Shiv Sena (UBT)’s Vinayak Raut.
“The incumbent MP is soft-spoken, accessible, and generally has a good impression among people, but when it was decided that the candidature will go to ‘dada’ (Narayan Rane), everyone decided to back him because he is a known, strong face from the region, who is among Modi’s ministers. Otherwise, one may have a gold plate and bowl, but what’s the use of it if you don’t have a spoon to eat from?” a Ratnagiri-based BJP functionary told ThePrint.
Rane, who was a BJP Rajya Sabha MP, was accommodated in the Modi cabinet in 2021 with the MSME portfolio. His term as a Rajya Sabha MP expired earlier this year, and the BJP did not renominate him, raising questions over whether it is the end of the road for Rane’s political ambitions.
This makes the Lok Sabha elections doubly important for Rane, who started his career with the Shiv Sena, before moving to the Congress and then the BJP.
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Give and take with ‘friend’ Sena
The Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg region has been one of the bastions of the undivided Shiv Sena in Maharashtra. Ever since the Shiv Sena split in June 2022 and the Eknath Shinde-led party joined hands with the BJP, the writing was on the wall.
There would be a tussle over who dominates this coastal belt — the Shinde-led Shiv Sena or Rane and his two sons — former MP Nilesh Rane and incumbent Kankavli MLA Nitesh Rane.
In the run-up to seat-sharing talks, passive aggression from both sides was apparent.
Two months ago, Rane stirred controversy for the Shinde-led government, which had to quell a massive Maratha quota protest by placating its leader Manoj Jarange-Patil with a draft notification giving all Marathas reservation as Kunbis through the Other Backward Classes category.
Rane, a Maratha, had rejected this draft notification, showing that there was dissent over CM Shinde’s decision within the ruling alliance. “Proud Marathas would not get included in Kunbis and seek benefits of reservation,” he had said.
Speaking to ThePrint Wednesday, Rane insisted he “did not speak against the government.”
“The kind of reservation that the Maratha community wants, they don’t want it by changing caste. They should be given reservation as Marathas,” he said, recalling how a committee under him had carved out a 16 percent reservation for the community under the Congress-NCP government when he was with the Congress in 2014.
The Bombay High Court, however, had struck it down.
Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg was one of the parliamentary seats caught in a seat-sharing tangle within the Mahayuti till a day before the last date for filing nominations when the BJP announced Rane’s name.
On Wednesday, Rane addressed two back-to-back gatherings in Ratnagiri. Seated on the stage with him for both these was Kiran Samant, brother of state industries minister Uday Samant from the Shinde-led Shiv Sena.
Kiran Samant wanted to contest the Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg Lok Sabha seat this time and the Shinde-led Shiv Sena was pushing hard within the Mahayuti to get the parliamentary constituency — which has traditionally been contested by the undivided Shiv Sena in its alliance with the BJP — in its kitty.
Rane’s supporters like to talk about how the minister did not want to contest but agreed only because of the insistence of the BJP leadership. The BJP pushed hard for the seat, and when it declared Rane’s name as the candidate, the cadre of the Shinde-led party was left dejected.
For the first time in many years, there would be no ‘bow and arrow’ symbol for the Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg seat. The symbol of the undivided Shiv Sena that the Election Commission gave to the Shinde-led party.
“Definitely, some karyakartas (party workers) will be upset because everyone was expecting me to contest. But I am meeting people personally and telling them now to support Rane. I have been going from village to village. We had prepared a campaign plan for myself and we are using the same one for Rane now. Instead of it being for me, it is for them. So there is no problem,” Kiran Samant told ThePrint.
He stayed by Rane’s side for most of the day even after the conclusion of the campaign meetings, optically sending a message that his party may have lost the seat to the BJP, but there’s no bad blood.
“Yes, it is true that the bow and arrow was always there in Konkan and it’s not there now, but this isn’t the last election. There will be assembly elections as well when we will see the bow and arrow strongly. There’s always some give and take in an alliance,” Kiran Samant added, indicating that Rane’s workers and the BJP cadre may have to return the favour during the assembly polls.
The BJP, the Shinde-led Shiv Sena, the Ajit Pawar-led NCP, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), and the Ramdas Athavale-led Republican Party of India have formed a steering committee comprising its local functionaries to plan the campaign so that all parties of the ruling alliance are on the same page.
The Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg parliamentary seat has six assembly constituencies. Of these two (Ratnagiri and Sawantwadi) are with the Shinde-led Shiv Sena, two others (Kudal and Rajapur) are with Shiv Sena (UBT), and one each is held by the BJP (Kankavli) and the Ajit Pawar-led NCP (Chiplun).
Vinay Natu, a former BJP MLA from Guhagar in the Ratnagiri district, said, all four MLAs of the Mahayuti here have mobilised their forces for Rane’s win.
“The assembly seats are fragmented between all three parties of the Mahayuti. Everyone is aware that, if they don’t pool in support now, they won’t get the same support from others six months later during the assembly polls,” Natu told ThePrint.
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Navigating the rival Sena
In the 1960s, before entering politics, Rane was said to be part of the ‘Harya Narya gang’— a street gang operating in the northeastern suburb of Chembur, where he lived.
He joined the Shiv Sena in the 1970s and became a shakha pramukh, the head of one of the party’s local administrative units.
In the 1980s, he was elected Shiv Sena corporator, and in the 1990s, Rane emerged as one of Shiv Sena’s most powerful leaders, making the journey from an MLA to a minister to ultimately the chief minister of the Shiv Sena-BJP government for a brief period between February and October 1999.
He quit the Shiv Sena in 2005 to join the Congress over differences with Uddhav Thackeray, Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray’s son.
“I got many posts because of Balasaheb Thackeray. I got the CM’s post. Today, whatever I have got is all because of him. But, Uddhav Thackeray and I did not get along. He is eccentric. He cannot see something good happening to someone else,” Rane told ThePrint.
Rane had also contested an assembly bypoll in 2015 from the Bandra East assembly constituency, but lost to the then undivided Shiv Sena.
BJP leaders are telling the Mahayuti’s grassroots cadre to tell voters how they have the right to use Bal Thackeray’s name and photo and not Uddhav Thackeray.
Addressing party workers in Ratnagiri Wednesday morning, Vinod Tawde, BJP’s national general secretary, spoke about how the Shiv Sena (UBT) is with the Congress that was “safeguarding Article 370” and “dismissing talks of the Uniform Civil Code.”
“Both the issues were important for Bal Thackeray. We need to clearly tell our voters the advantages of voting for Rane saheb and the disadvantages of voting for Shiv Sena (UBT),” Tawde said at the meeting.
Meanwhile, the Shiv Sena (UBT) is talking about the development it has been able to bring to Konkan and what needs to be done — how the former Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government under Uddhav Thackeray brought a medical college to Sindhudurg and improved the condition of roads, how the belt needs to tap the potential of its horticulture and tourism with related industries, how work on the Ratnagiri patch of the Mumbai-Goa highway needs to be sped up, among others.
The incumbent MP Vinayak Raut seeking a third term also mentioned the “injustice to the Thackeray clan” because of the split in the Shiv Sena and the aggression of Rane and his sons that doesn’t go down well with the average placid, soft-spoken Konkani.
“Every time Narayan Rane has contested, it has always been associated with violence. In the past, the Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg seat used to be considered sensitive, like Gadchiroli, for law and order issues. But, in the past 10 years, that has changed and the Konkani manus (people) knows why,” Raut told ThePrint as he gulped down the last piece of his nachni bhakri and paneer, before heading for the next campaign meet.
(Edited by Richa Mishra)
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