Mumbai: Ever since he joined the Narendra Modi-led Union cabinet in 2019, Narayan Rane — a firebrand Maratha leader and a party hopper who is reputed to have frequent run-ins with his party leaderships — has kept an unusually low profile.
Except for the occasional outburst aimed at Maharashtra’s Opposition — such as in 2021, when he threatened to slap his bête noire Uddhav Thackeray, now chief of the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) — Rane, a BJP leader, a Rajya Sabha MP, and the Union minister Minister of micro, small and medium enterprises, mostly steered clear of any major controversies.
That changed this week, when he openly criticised the Eknath Shinde-led Mahayuti government’s controversial decision to extend reservation benefits currently afforded to the OBC caste group Kunbis to the “sage soyare” — that is, birth relations and through relations by marriage — of eligible Marathas.
Marathas form 33 percent of the state’s population and have been sporadically protesting for reservation in jobs and educational institutions for years.
“Proud Marathas would not get included in Kunbis and seek benefits of reservations. This could mean an encroachment over the existing OBCs,” Rane, a former chief minister of Maharashtra, said in a post on social media platform X. “It will lead to suppression of the Maratha community that has a historical legacy and it will also be an encroachment on the other backward communities. It could lead to an unrest in the state.”
This attack came at a time when the Mahayuti — an alliance comprising the Shinde-led Shiv Sena, the BJP, and the Ajit Pawar-led faction of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) — was already facing opposition from within. For instance, only days before, Chhagan Bhujbal, an OBC leader from Ajit Pawar’s NCP faction and a minister in the Shinde cabinet, had announced he would hold a mega rally to oppose, what he called, “backdoor entry” of Marathas into the Maharashtra’s OBC category.
It was also seemingly peculiar that Rane, despite being a Maratha leader who even headed a committee to consider the reservation issue when he was in the Congress in 2014, struck out against the decision.
The remarks also came at a time when Rane’s term in Rajya Sabha is nearly at an end. The leader’s term ends in April and he will have to fight elections for the upper house on 27 February if he wants to keep his ministry.
According to political analyst Prakash Bal, the BJP once saw Rane as vital to capturing the state’s Maratha votes. However, political dynamics have changed in the state since Shinde, a Maratha leader who led a rebellion against the then Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray in June 2022, allied with the BJP.
Shinde’s rebellion caused the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government led by Thackeray and comprising the undivided Shiv Sena, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), and the Congress to fall. He was sworn in as chief minister on 30 June, 2022.
“Once upon a time, when Eknath Shinde had not joined hands with the BJP, Narayan Rane was the Maratha face of the BJP (and the NDA),” Bal told ThePrint. “But now, Narayan Rane isn’t very politically relevant in Maharashtra. (Therefore) he is of little relevance in the BJP.”
On its part, the Maharashtra BJP believes that there’s no difference of opinion between Rane and the party over the Maratha reservation. “Rane doesn’t oppose the Maratha reservation, we are all on the same page,” Maharashtra BJP spokesperson Keshav Upadhye told ThePrint over a phone call.
ThePrint tried to reach Rane via calls and text messages. This report will be updated if and when a response is received.
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‘Delicate matter’ — Rane’s stance against his own govt
It was in August that Jalna-based activist Manoj Jarange Patil first began his hunger strike for the Maratha reservation.
On 27 December, when Jarange Patil was on his third round of indefinite hunger strike, Shinde promised to provide Kunbi certificates to Marathas — a decision that did not go down well with the state’s other OBC castes. Jarange Patil called off his strike soon after.
A month later, on 27 January, the Shinde government made its draft notification public. Until then, Rane had kept silent on an issue that had by then gone on for months and which had the potential to affect the Mahayuti alliance’s chances in the upcoming general and assembly elections.
That day, he spoke out against it, even calling a press conference the next day to elaborate on his stand. A day later, however, he called off the press meet.
“I’m cancelling my press conference. But it is my request to the Maharashtra government not to suppress the Maratha community, which has a glorious history of wars and battles. It is a delicate matter that the state needs to study deeply,” he said in a post on X.
Significantly, the decision came on the same day as the Election Commission of India’s announcement of Rajya Sabha polls. According to political analyst Abhay Deshpande, it may have been done at the BJP leadership’s prompting.
The party has yet to announce its candidates for the Rajya Sabha elections.
“Looks like the party leadership told him to do so as they did not want any differences over the Maratha issue. Hence, he cancelled his press conference,” he said.
On their part, BJP leaders ThePrint spoke to took a cautious line on Rane’s stand, including his decision to cancel the press meet. “He is a senior leader and since he headed the committee on Maratha reservation in the past, he knows the issue. But do not think this has anything to do with his term expiring,” a senior BJP leader told ThePrint.
Another senior BJP leader told ThePrint that only the central leadership could comment on nominating candidates for Rajya Sabha elections. “It will be declared at an appropriate time. So, I can’t really say anything at the moment,” the second leader said.
From an aggressive leader to a quiet minister
In 2019, when the BJP took Rane on board and made him a minister, it saw in him a strong Maratha face that’s popular in the Maharashtra Konkan belt, a region that’s traditionally considered the stronghold of the undivided Shiv Sena, and where the BJP is considered to be weak.
The belt, with its 75 assembly seats, accounts for over one-fourth of the total 288 constituencies and has six parliamentary seats — Thane, Kalyan, Bhiwandi, Palghar, Raigad, and Rane’s home turf, Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg.
Of these six seats, the BJP holds only one — Bhiwandi.
Soon after the Maharashtra assembly polls in 2019, the BJP fell out with the undivided Shiv Sena, then headed by Uddhav Thackeray, and the party seemingly began to feel Rane’s importance more.
That changed in 2022, when Eknath Shinde led a rebellion against Thackeray and allied with the BJP, bringing 39 of the party’s 55 MLAs with him. It further changed last year, when Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar — another Maratha leader like Shinde — rebelled against his uncle, NCP chief Sharad Pawar, and allied with the ruling government.
Political analysts believe these developments changed the political dynamics in Maharashtra, causing Rane to lose his former relevance to the BJP.
But Rane was once a formidable leader in Maharashtra, with a political career spanning five decades during which he went from being part of the Shiv Sena, the Congress, and the NCP to even floating his own party — the Maharashtra Swabhiman Paksha, which merged with the BJP in 2019.
In the 1960s, before he entered politics, the Konkan strongman was part of the ‘Harya-Narya’ gang, a street gang operating in Mumbai’s northeastern suburb of Chembur. The leader, who came from Maharashtra’s picturesque Sindhudurg district, started his political career in the Shiv Sena, rising to be the Mumbai shakha pramukh (head) in the mid 1970s.
In February 1999, during the term of the state’s first Shiv Sena-BJP government, a real-estate scam involving his son-in-law forced Shiv Sena’s Manohar Joshi to step down. Although Rane succeeded him, his term was brief — in October that very year, the alliance lost the assembly election to the Congress and the NCP, and Rane became the leader of Opposition.
In 2002, the Shiv Sena lost the gram panchayat elections in Kankavli in Rane’s home turf of Sindhudurg to the NCP. The loss, which was followed by mob violence in the area, was reportedly blamed on Rane.
By 2005, Rane’s differences with the party — particularly with Uddhav, who was elected the party’s executive president the year before — became public knowledge. Rane vocally opposed the election, a move that led to his expulsion from the Shiv Sena in July 2005.
Still wanting to become the state’s chief minister, the leader then went to the Congress. But those ambitions were thwarted in 2008 when the Congress announced that Ashok Chavan would be made CM.
A miffed Rane publicly accused senior party leaders such as Sonia Gandhi of having gone back on their word, but eventually apologised and was later inducted into the cabinet.
He finally parted ways with the Congress in 2017 and floated the Maharashtra Swabhiman Paksha a year later. The party declared support to the BJP and Rane was given a Rajya Sabha seat.
According to political commentators, Rane’s demeanour began to change after he joined the Union cabinet. It’s in this light that his political statement on the Maratha issue appears to be at odds, they say.
“Since becoming minister, Rane has left all displays of aggression to (his son and Kankavli MLA) Nitesh Rane and he keeps quiet,” political analyst Prakash Bal said. “The fact that he spoke on the Maratha reservation issue could also be because he considers himself a 96 Kuli Maratha (a Maratha subcaste that considers itself elite) and doesn’t want to be included in Kunbi.”
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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