MUMBAI: Narayan Rane’s induction into the Union cabinet on Wednesday is being viewed as an unexpected rise for the veteran politician after his rise and fall in the state’s politics. It signals BJP’s intent to strengthen its base in the coastal Konkan region and its push for a neta who can directly take on Uddhav Thackeray.
Importantly, in the recent past, former CM and Rajya Sabha MP Rane has emerged as an aggressive Maratha leader, and the BJP expects his elevation will help it to secure the support of Marathas whose stir for a quota has still not borne fruit. During Congress-NCP rule in the state, Rane was chairman of a committee set up to provide reservation to the Marathas.
Rane began his political career as shakha pramukh or the local unit head of the Shiv Sena in the Chembur area.
An aggressive municipal councillor, he was first elected to the legislative council in 1990 and was made cabinet member in 1995 in the Sena-BJP government led by Manohar Joshi. In 1999, Sena founder Bal Thackeray asked Joshi to step down and installed Rane as chief minister.
When Rane later took on Uddhav Thackeray as a Sena leader, he was expelled from the party in July 2005 and subsequently joined the Congress on the assurance that he would soon be made the CM. Rane was inducted as cabinet minister and was given the industries portfolio. Rane later criticized the Congress high command when Ashok Chavan replaced Vilasrao Deshmukh as CM after the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks before expressing regrets about his comments.
After waiting for 12 years, Rane quit the Congress in 2017 and floated his own party, Maharashtra Swabhiman Paksha. Rane then had a series of meetings with then chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and union home minister Amit Shah on his party’s merger with the BJP. With BJP’s support, Rane was elected to the Rajya Sabha. His contention was that since he was joining the BJP, he should get a better deal and should be considered for a post in the union cabinet whenever an expansion took place. Along with Fadnavis, Rane was in constant touch with NCP president Sharad Pawar but later preferred to join the BJP.
