After a lull, when it was the turn of the BJP to be jolted by infighting with the open battle between Gopinath Munde and Nitin Gadkari, Narayan Rane is back at it in the Congress.
MUMBAI: After a lull, when it was the turn of the BJP to be jolted by infighting with the open battle between Gopinath Munde and Nitin Gadkari, Narayan Rane is back at it in the Congress.
The dissident revenue minister has threatened to resign from the state cabinet. Only, he won’t do it in a hurry. He has given the leadership eight days to persuade him not to.
A source close to Rane said the erstwhile Shiv Sena leader and former chief minister had offered to step down as minister and continue as an ordinary party worker.
Congress general secretary Margaret Alva, speaking to reporters at Kolhapur en route Karnataka, dismissed Rane’s reported threat as a “rumour”. She said the party was busy with the Karnataka election campaign and there was no possibility of changing Maharashtra’s chief minister.
The source close to Rane, however, claimed that the rebel minister would go to Delhi on May 4 to meet Congress president Sonia Gandhi and explain his stand.
Rane, however, suffered a letdown on Monday when neither Alva nor state Congress president Prabha Rau nor Union tourism minister Ambika Soni turned up for the Sindhu Mahotsav he is hosting at his native Kankavli in Sindhudurg district. Only state dairy development minister Anees Ahmed visited the two-day event.
Officially, both Deshmukh and state Congress spokesman Hussain Dalwai pleaded ignorance of Rane’s latest missive. When contacted, Deshmukh said, “I am in Latur. I do not [know anything of what] you are talking about.”
Privately, senior Congress leaders said Rane was probably getting desperate to become the chief minister and so was resorting to pressure tactics. On Monday, another source close to Rane said the revenue minister, talking to a section of the press, had expressed displeasure at the party ignoring its purported assurance to him when he joined the party in 2005 that he would be made chief minister within six months.
The source said Rane was reassured six months ago by the leadership that his demands would be looked into. Over the weekend political circles were agog with rumours about the upcoming visit of Union minister Pranab Mukherjee and AK Antony to the state to judge the situation here. But that visit too is yet to materialise.
But a senior Congress leader, on condition of anonymity, told DNA that the party does not take kindly to such ultimatums. If Rane felt so frustrated at being ignored, he said, he was free to quit the party.
Those close to Rane, however, say he is being wrongly targeted for the defeat of Congress MLC Sudhakar Gangane in the recent legislative council election.
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