When the former chief minister of Maharashtra, Narayan Rane, crossed over to the Congress from the Shiv Sena in 2005, little did he realise that despite his best efforts to prove his worth to his new party, he would have to wait patiently and temper his fiery outbursts to achieve his goals. But he seems to have got the message finally. So, when the Congress high command gave a thumbs-up to Maharashtra chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, Rane who has been his vocal critic all along, chose to tone down his rhetoric and evade the subject.

Three years ago, Rane engineered the defections of seven Shiv Sena MLAs to the Congress, of which six were re-elected on Congress tickets. That did the trick for the Congress, which had been belittled by its ally—and rival—the NCP in the 2004 assembly polls. The NCP had emerged as the single-largest party with 71 seats and the Congress had won 69 in the House of 288. Rane’s efforts took the Congress numbers to 75, four more than the NCP.

He became the blue-eyed boy of the Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC) chief Prabha Rau and the AICC incharge of the state, Margaret Alva. His efforts also got him into the good books of the Congress high command.

Euphoric over his success, Rane expected quick rewards from the Congress. Since he was the chief minister in 1999 during the Sena-BJP regime (1995-99), Rane considered himself the best candidate to head the existing Congress-led coalition government in the state.

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