Narayan Rane quits Sena; joins ruling party

Rane–gade: Another rebel joins Congress
By Akshay A. Kalbag
For rebel leaders in Maharashtra, it has been proved once again that Cong is king!
Earlier, firebrand Member of Parliament Sanjay Nirupam quit the Shiv Sena over differences of opinion with the party supremo, Balasaheb Thackeray, his son Uddhav and nephew Raj.
Nirupam, ironically, joined the same party against whom the Sena fielded him as a candidate. The fiery MP was once seen as the young and aggressive face of the Sena, and the party viewed him as the leader who could woo the North Indian community residing in Mumbai, as he hails from Bihar. He eventually joined the Congress despite some stiff resistance from the late actor–turned–MP, Sunil Dutt.
Dutt and Nirupam have been formidable rivals, standing for elections from the Mumbai North–West constituency. When the Honourable Sports Minister of India (Sunil Dutt) was alive, Nirupam and he have had some memorable ‘saamnas’, but in Dutt’s last days, Nirupam had become a party colleague of his one–time rival.
Now it is the turn of another former Shiv Sainik to ‘bow’ out and seek help from the “foreign ‘hand’” to make a new beginning to his political career. Last week, Narayan Rane was shown the door along with just a handful of his supporters by the Shiv Sena party leadership.
But, without wasting too much time, the expelled leader announced his decision to join the Congress.
A few days ago, a photograph of Rane appeared in a leading daily, in which he was shown beaming from ear to ear, despite having little to feel pleased about.
But then, politics in India leaves the readers with a lot of questions that remain unanswered forever, and a lot of things that nobody really attempts to explain.
The thorn in the Thackeray family’s flesh was seen sharing a light moment with the current Chief Minister, Vilasrao Deshmukh. For the record, Rane himself has himself held the CM’s post for a while a few years ago.
In Nirupam and Rane, the Sena has lost two of its young leaders. The only reason why they were forced to leave the party was that they were not performing their roles properly, or so the party supremo felt. On their part, both Nirupam and Rane felt that they were being used by the Tiger and his two cubs and then being blamed for the saffron combine’s poor showing in the 2004 Maharashtra assembly elections.
But the decision of the two leaders to rebel against the Sena reminds one of the old adage which states that “if you can’t beat them, join them.” That is literally what happened in this case.
Now the election results have proved that the public has lost faith in the leadership of Indian fundamentalists born on Indian soil. The BJP–Shiv Sena coalition reigned at the Centre for five and a half years, and now has been replaced by the Congress–Nationalist Congress Party combine, and India is no longer ‘Shining’. Several leaders seem to be leaving the hard–core Hindutva ideology and joining Madam Sonia Gandhi for pasta.
In the tradition of other ‘pawar’ful leaders from the state, both Nirupam and Rane have also gone (bhuj) ballistic against their former parties. I guess all one has to do is welcome these two rebels with applause, and wish that they serve their new parties with the same enthusiasm and vigour as they did (or didn’t) their old one.