With Ashok Chavan tipped for Higher Home, BJP hints at fielding Narayan Rane in Lok Sabha fray
Union Minister Narayan Rane.
| Photograph Credit score: PTI
Former Congressman and Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan’s entry into the Bharatiya Janata Occasion (BJP) has dampened Union Minister Narayan Rane’s probabilities of being despatched to the Rajya Sabha for a second time period. Nevertheless, reviews counsel that the BJP might subject Mr. Rane within the upcoming Lok Sabha polls from Maharashtra’s Konkan area.
Sources on Tuesday stated that Mr. Chavan could be nominated by the BJP for one (of the three) Rajya Sabha seats in Maharashtra that the BJP shall be staking a declare on. With 104 MLAs, the BJP has the numbers to simply win three of the Stae’s six Higher Home seats, which go to the polls on February 27.
In keeping with a senior BJP chief, Mr. Chavan was more likely to file his nomination on February 14.
Chatting with The Hindu on situation of anonymity, he additional stated the social gathering was planning to subject Union Ministers like Mr. Rane and Piyush Goyal, whose Rajya Sabha phrases have been ending, within the Lok Sabha fray.
Sources additionally stated that quickly after Mr. Chavan’s entry into the BJP, Mr. Rane got here to satisfy with Deputy Chief Minister and Maharashtra BJP chief Devendra Fadnavis on the Sahyadri visitor home in Mumbai.
Whereas it’s unclear how the BJP will accommodate Mr. Rane within the wake of Mr. Chavan’s entry, it seems that the Minister of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) is being primed as a candidate for the important thing Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg Lok Sabha seat within the Konkan area.
The seat is at present being held by Uddhav Thackeray loyalist Vinayak Raut, one of many handful of MPs to stay with Mr. Thackeray’s Shiv Sena (UBT) faction.
Maharashtra’s political vicissitudes have now introduced Mr. Rane and Mr. Chavan — bitter rivals throughout their time within the Congress — on the identical aspect once more. When Mr. Rane severed his over-a-decade-long affiliation with the Congress in September 2017, he launched right into a diatribe towards Mr. Chavan, who was then the Maharashtra Congress chief.
He had described how he was neglected for the put up of Maharashtra Chief Minister a minimum of 4 instances, regardless of repeated assurances from prime Congress leaders like Ahmed Patel that he would get it.
Mr. Rane, the as soon as stalwart Shiv Sena strongman-turned-Congressman, who dominated his fiefdom of Kudal in Sindhudurg district for six phrases as MLA, was trounced comprehensively by the Sena’s Vaibhav Naik within the 2014 Maharashtra Meeting elections.
Since then, his political fortunes inside the social gathering have steadily been on the wane, marred by bickering and wrangling.
After leaving the Congress, his entry into the BJP was not precisely clean.
It was hoped that Mr. Rane’s adhesion to the BJP would assist the saffron social gathering increase within the Konkan the place it’s weak. Nevertheless, the plans got here a cropper within the 2019 Meeting election which noticed Mr. Thackeray’s undivided Shiv Sena effortlessly retain 9 of the 14 Meeting segments within the three essential districts of the Konkan area, with Mr. Rane failing to convey beneficial properties for the BJP.
Regardless of this, the BJP nonetheless sees the Rane clan because the potential challenger to Sena (UBT) within the Konkan, given the extraordinary private acrimony between Mr. Rane and Mr. Thackeray.
