Returning to the Konkan election arena for his swansong, Narayan Rane plays “alma mater.” Sena

The two Shiv Senas engage in a pivotal war against one another in the tranquil Konkan coastal district, about 350km from Mumbai. Union minister for micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSME), Narayan Rane, a former dependable assistant to Sena founder Bal Thackeray, will face incumbent MP Vinayak Raut of Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena (UBT) in the Sena stronghold of Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg.

Rane, 72, is back in the polling business ten years later. He was initially hesitant to fight, but the BJP, which is not very strong in this region, is trying to increase its Lok Sabha representation in Maharashtra. “BJP forced me to do this. I am running to carry out the mandate of my party. While out on the campaign road, he told TOI, “This will be my last election.”

There was a time when Rane was unbeatable in this area. From this point on, he won six consecutive assembly votes. After parting ways with Uddhav Thackeray in 2005, the former chief minister quit the Shiv Sena and joined the Congress, but his winning record persisted.
However, after losing a Mumbai bypoll in 2015 and Konkan assembly votes in 2014, his popularity started to decline.

Rane then quit the Congress and founded Maharashtra Swabhiman Paksha, a party that united with the BJP in 2019. The BJP helped him win a seat in the Rajya Sabha. One of the six assembly segments in the Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg Lok Sabha constituency, the Kankavli seat, was won by his son Nitesh in 2019, and he is now a BJP MLA. In 2009, his older son Nilesh ran for Congress and won the Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg LS seat; however, he lost the elections in 2014 and 2019.

Rane is running for Lok Sabha for the first time in his forty-year career, which includes a spell as Sena chief minister and many periods in state and Union ministries. However, the race is fierce. As a result of the BJP-caused split of Shiv Sena in 2022, there is now hostility against the BJP and Rane, a former party insider who is now a rival, as well as support for Uddhav Thackeray’s party.

Shiv Sena, which was established in Mumbai in 1966 during a surge of nativist feeling, has long held sway over Konkan. Mumbai was the destination of Konkani migrants due to the absence of industry in the area. They helped a party based on the idea of “sons of the soil” gain traction in their local communities by serving as a solid base of support for it.

The seat had formerly been split into Rajapur and Ratnagiri, and socialist and Congress participation was common. Madhu Dandavate, the leader of the Janata Dal, served as a Rajapur MP from 1971 to 1989. Nevertheless, it became Shiv Sena territory in 1995 when Suresh Prabhu and Anant Geete defeated them in Rajapur and Ratnagiri.

Following the creation of a newly defined Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg constituency in 2009, Suresh Prabhu was defeated by Nilesh, the son of Narayan Rane, who was running for Congress at the time. However, Vinayak Raut of the United Shiv Sena regained the seat by 2014.

The division among the Shiv Sena is evident in Ratnagiri’s retail stores and rickshaw stands. This is a stronghold of the Shiv Sena. The BJP has divided the group. The party emblem of Uddhav Thackeray, the mashaal, will be lit, and people will get retribution on traitors, according to rickshaw driver Shivaji Chavan.

Rane brushes off the compassion element. What compassion? Because of his insults to them, Uddhav Thackeray’s ministers and MLAs broke with him. In the elections, his party will sink like the Titanic, he predicts.

Vinayak Raut of the Shiv Sena (UBT), Rane’s rival, responds. This time, traitors will be eliminated from Konkan. He claims that Rane will likewise pay a price for his family’s use of coercion to get their way.

With two victories under his belt, Raut is aiming for a hat trick. He defeated Nilesh in the 2019 elections with a margin of about 1.8 lakh votes. Nevertheless, Nilesh received 2.8 lakh votes while running as a Swabhiman Paksh candidate at that time.

Rising costs and a dearth of jobs in Konkan are major problems here. “The majority of young people still go to Kolhapur, Mumbai, or Pune for jobs. There are no significant enterprises, little development in the tourist sector, and inadequate connections. After ten years, the Mumbai-Goa highway is still unfinished, according to an unnamed businessman.

Protests over a proposed oil refinery in Rajapur’s Barsu hamlet have also grown into a problem. The demonstrators have made the decision to support Raut over Rane. Since the BJP has backed this initiative both at the federal and state levels, we are running our campaign for Raut. According to Kashinath Gorle of the Barsu Solgaon Refinery Virodhi Sanghatna, “We do not want a polluting industry here.”

The Mahayuti coalition presents Rane with his last obstacle. A lengthy tug-of-war ensued over the seat, with CM Eknath Shinde seeking it for his Shiv Sena. Kiran Samant, the brother of Industries Minister Uday Samant, was the contender.

Will the Shiv Sena led by Shinde oppose Rane? “We have sorted this out and are 100% with Rane,” Samant promises. Rane declares he is certain of winning as he gets ready for his last election campaign. “People want me to be an MP and they want Prime Minister Modi to serve a third term. They are holding off on voting for me until polling day.