Rane started his career as a shakha pramukh of the Shiv Sena, soon became a BMC corporator, and then the chairman of the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply Undertaking Committee. His rise was so meteoric that in 1999 he replaced party colleague Manohar Joshi as the chief minister of Maharashtra, albeit only for six months. During his years with the Sena, Rane was among those who enforced the party diktats on the streets of Mumbai.
Rane not only strengthened the Sena in the Mumbai municipal corporation, but was also one of the leaders who helped it establish a stronghold in the Konkan region. He was rumoured to bankroll the elections expenses of a sizeable number of Sena MLA candidates in the region. However, in 2002, the Shiv Sena lost the gram panchayat elections in Kankavli in Sindhudurg district to the NCP , and Rane’s home in the district was burnt to the ground by a mob.
The fallout with Thackerays
Rane did not get any sympathy from the party leadership over this, and instead there were questions raised over his leadership in the Konkan. By this time Uddhav Thackeray had started taking over the reins of the party from his father Bal Thackeray. Those in the know whispered that Uddhav was clipping Rane’s wings because of the latter’s friendship with the Thackeray cousin Raj. Rane, who was already known for his outbursts, lashed out at Uddhav’s leadership after the party lost the assembly elections in 2004. He claimed that election tickets were sold. He resigned from the party to preempt a sacking, but the party expelled him anyway.
Unlike others before him like Chhagan Bhujbal, Rane did not cower down after his exit from the Sena. He began even more scathing attacks on Uddhav. On the streets, his followers took on Uddhav loyalists. Often the fights turned personal, with Rane raising allegations of corruption against the family of Uddhav’s wife Rashmi, and the Sena trolling Rane over his height and the number of criminal cases against him.
Rane later joined the Congress, but his ambition cut short his stint there too. He felt the Congress was not giving him his due by making him the chief minister, and he began attacking the party leadership. He was suspended from the Congress for six years, apologised to Sonia Gandhi and got back as minister, and later in 2017, left the party for good.
Merger with BJP
In October 2017, he floated the Maharashtra Swabhiman Paksha and sought to ally with the BJP. So strained were his relations with the Thackerays, that coalition partner BJP had to reiterate he was not a member of the party even as they supported his nomination to the Rajya Sabha. After the Sena and the BJP parted ways, Rane merged his outfit with the BJP, and was rewarded with a cabinet berth in the recent reshuffle.
The cabinet berth was a sign that the BJP was planning to go all out against the Shiv Sena in the forthcoming Mumbai Civic elections. The BJP wants to use Rane’s inside knowledge of the Shiv Sena and the BMC. Immediately after being sworn in, Rane said Uddhav was not “fit to rule the state”. The visceral hate was passed on to the next generation too. Rane’s sons have been taking potshots at Aaditya Thackeray, and one of them even posted an objectionable comment on social media which he deleted later.
The manner in which the union minister was arrested on Tuesday is surely going to make this bitter feud between the two families even more bitter.
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