(From left) Uddhav Thackeray; Narayan Rane
Credit: PTI Images
Mumbai: Its Thackerays-vs-Ranes in the Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg Lok Sabha seat in the coastal Konkan belt of Maharashtra.
Days after Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT) announced the name of close Thackeray-family aide and two-time sitting MP Vinayak Raut from Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg LS seat, the BJP has declared that Union Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Minister Narayan Rane to contest the polls.
The coastal Konkan belt is the bastion of Balasaheb Thackeray-founded Shiv Sena.
The elections to Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg is going to be fiercely contested as the Thackerays and Ranes are bete noire.
Rane, a former Chief Minister and ex-Leader of Opposition was expelled by Balasaheb in 2005 for raising a banner of revolt against Uddhav. Rane later joined the Congress to become a minister in the erstwhile Congress-NCP Democratic Front government.
However, his dream of becoming the Chief Minister or the Maharashtra Congress President never realised and he left the grand old party in 2017.
Rane floated Maharashtra Swabhiman Paksha (MSP) which he later merged with the BJP and became a Rajya Sabha member. Thereafter, he was appointed a minister in the Narendra Modi-led NDA government at the Centre.
From Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg, in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, Rane’s older son Dr Nilesh Rane won the seat on a Congress seat but was defeated in 2014 and 2019 by Shiv Sena’s Vinayak Raut, who is close aid of Uddhav and his son Aaditya Thackeray.
In 2014, Nilesh contested on a Congress ticket and in 2019 on a MSP ticket, however, on both occasions, he was defeated by Raut, who before becoming a Lok Sabha member, was an MLA from Vile Parle in Mumbai and an ex-MLC.
Rane’s younger son Nitesh Rane is a BJP MLA from Kankavli, a seat from where he has represented Congress earlier.
The six Vidhan Sabha segments and the MLAs are: Chiplun (Shekhar Nikam - NCP, Ratnagiri (Uday Samant - Shiv Sena), Rajapur (Rajan Salvi - Shiv Sena-UBT), Kankavli (Nitesh Rane - BJP), Kudal (Vaibhav Naik - Shiv Sena-UBT) and Sawantwadi (Deepak Kesarkar - Shiv Sena).