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Mumbai: Union Minister Narayan Rane has sparked a controversy over his remarks about slapping Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray for claiming the year of India’s independence as ignorance.
There is speculation that Rane may be arrested for his remarks against the chief minister. Some reports said that a Nashik police team has left for Chiplun in the Konkan region, where Rane is presently present, following a complaint against the Union minister over the remarks. There is no information from the police on these developments yet.
It is shameful that the Chief Minister does not know the year of independence. He leaned back during his speech to ask about the counting of the years of independence. Rane, during his Jan Ashirwad Yatra, adjoining Raigad district on Monday, said that if I were there, I would have given him a slap.
The BJP leader and former Shiv Sena chief minister claimed that Thackeray forgot the year of independence while addressing the people of the state on August 15. Rane said Thackeray was supposed to see the year of independence along with his colleagues midway during the speech that day.
Rane’s remarks drew sharp reactions from the Shiv Sena, whose activists put up several posters in Mumbai and other places, calling him a kombdi chor (chicken thief), in reference to the poultry shop he ran in Chembur five decades ago. The party led by Bal Thackeray during his initial tenure.
Shiv Sena’s Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg MP Vinayak Raut said Rane has lost his mental balance.
Rane has been attacking the Shiv Sena and its leaders to influence the BJP leadership. He lost his composure after joining the Modi-led ministry. Raut said Modi should show them the door.
Rane began his political career in Mumbai in the late 1960s with the Bal Thackeray-led Mitti Ke Son Party. He entered the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly in 1990 as a Shiv Sena MLA.
In February 1999, he took oath as the 13th Chief Minister of Maharashtra. That tenure was short as the then Shiv Sena-BJP alliance lost the state assembly elections held later that year.
In 2005, Rane broke away from Shiv Sena after irreconcilable differences with Thackeray.
After leaving Shiv Sena, he joined Congress and was made the revenue minister of the state. He quit the Congress in 2017 saying that he had joined it in six months on the assurance of coming to the top position in the state.
He founded the Maharashtra Swabhiman Paksha with his two sons Nilesh and Nitesh as his chief generals, but later merged it with the BJP.
Over the years, Rane’s rivals have linked him to several incidents of violence, claiming to be the murder of an army worker in Konkan’s Sindhudurg district and some other crimes.
Read also: With you at every step, will not let anyone hinder the development of the state, Uddhav told Gadkari
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