Narayan Rane

Rane joined Shiv Sena in his early twenties and started his political career as local Shakha Pramukh at Chembur, Mumbai.[8] He then became the Councillor of Kopargaon.[9] Under the BJP-Shiv Sena coalition government, Rane first received the Revenue Ministry portfolio. He succeeded Manohar Joshi as Chief Minister in 1999, when Joshi was forced to resign due to a land use controversy.[10] Later that year, the BJP-Sena alliance led by Rane lost the October 1999 Maharashtra elections to an INC-NCP coalition. The election campaign opened a breach between Rane and Uddhav Thackeray, the president of Shiv Sena. Relations between Thackeray and Rane finally ruptured completely in 2005, when Rane submitted his resignation from the party. In response Thackeray expelled Rane from the party on 3 July 2005, accusing Rane of "gangsterism" and "betrayal of the party."[11][12]

Rane joined the Indian National Congress in 2005, receiving his old post as Revenue Minister under the Second Desmukh Ministry.[13][14] In a 2005 by-election, he won re-election from his old Malvan seat in the Konkan region on a Congress ticket.[15][16] In the wake of 2008 Mumbai attacks, Vilasrao Deshmukh, then Chief Minister of Maharashtra resigned, and Sonia Gandhi elevated Ashok Chavan as Chief Minister.[17] Rane accused Congress leadership of breaching its promises to make him Chief Minister, and was suspended by the party. After Rane apologized, the INC revoked this suspension.[18] Prithviraj Chavan appointed Rane as Minister of Industry in his first ministry, elevating Balasheb Thorat to Rane's old Revenue portfolio.[19] Rane resigned from the Cabinet in July 2014 over differences with the party's leadership on the INC's campaign effort.[20] The BJP and SHS went on to claim victory in the 2014 Maharashtra Legislative Assembly election, in which Rane lost his bid for re-election to a Shiv Sena candidate.[21]

In 2016, the INC appointed Rane as a member of the Maharashtra Legislative Council. The appointment did not suppress the increasingly public feud between Rane and Congress leadership, however, prompting speculation about Rane's future in the party.[22] On 21 September 2017, Rane resigned both from the INC and from his membership on the Maharashtra Legislative Council.[23][24]

Through press at the time expected Rane's resignation to result in an appointment to Devendra Fadnavis's cabinet,[25] Shiv Sena, still led by Rane's longtime rival Uddhav Thackeray, threatened to withdraw from the BJP-led coalition if Rane was admitted.[26] Temporarily without a party, Rane formed a new political party in October 2017 called the Maharashtra Swabhiman Paksha and indicated it would ally with Bharatiya Janata Party.[27][28][29] However, when Rane ran for Rajya Sabha in 2018, he did so under a BJP party line.[30]

Rane merged his party, Maharashtra Swabhiman Paksha, with the Bharatiya Janata Party on October 15, 2019.[31] Following that year's legislative assembly elections in Maharashtra, the BJP-Sena alliance broke down completely.[32] During the July 2021 Cabinet reshuffle, Modi elevated Rane to Minister of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises. Political writer Aditi Phadnis interpreted this as a BJP attempt to make inroads in the Marathi strongholds of their former allies, Shiv Sena.[33][34]