In what is seen as the beginning of a new mission for former CM and Union minister Narayan Rane, the Shiv Sainik-turned-Congressman-turned-BJP leader has been made the BJP’s Lok Sabha candidate from Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg. The BJP had thought of fielding the veteran instead of repeating him in the Rajya Sabha early this year because Rane has been tasked with replacing the ‘bow and arrow’ with the ‘lotus’ in the Konkan area where the undivided Sena continued to have a good run despite organisational upsets such as Raj Thackeray and Rane’s exit in the first decade of the 21st century.

Rane had been given a similar mission when he had shifted to the Congress. His brief was to get all his rebel MLAs in Konkan and Mumbai re-elected, but it didn’t happen the way it was expected. However, his elder son, Nilesh Rane won the 2009 Lok Sabha election for the Congress, but got beaten in 2014 and 2019 by the undivided Sena. He was in the Congress in 2014, and five years later, he contested as a nominee of the Rane family’s short-lived Maharashtra Swabhiman Paksha, which was eventually merged with the BJP.