Controversy and Union Minister Narayan Rane go hand-in-hand and he makes it no holds barred if it involves Shiv Sena, his former party. It is this quality of the Rane family that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) aims to use to wound the Sena ahead of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) polls, where it lacks an aggressive Marathi face.
Mr. Rane’s belligerent attacks on Uddhav Thackeray’s Sena, especially since the latter became Maharashtra’s Chief Minister of a tripartite Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government, have often been abusive, below-the-belt and provocative. So much that his statement of warning physical assault on Mr. Uddhav Thackeray landed the BJP leader in jail, though he was bailed out on the same day.
Mr. Rane rose to power from being the Sena’s ‘shakha-pramukh’ (ward-level leader but a most important office in the party’s organisational hierarchy). Having served as State Chief Minister from the Sena, Mr. Rane switched to the Congress in 2005 over disagreements with Mr. Uddhav Thackeray and ‘his coterie.’ He tasted defeat on his home turf in Konkan in the Assembly poll by a rookie from the Sena in 2014 and in later years, BJP’s Kirit Somaiya made allegations of money laundering and using shell companies against him and his sons. The case is on silent mode at present. He quit the Congress to form his own party, which was dissolved in few months and he joined the BJP where he was given Rajya Sabha seat and made Union Minister of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises.
