PANAJI
The Congress high command announced on Wednesday that it has cleared its former chief minister Pratapsingh Rane for the Poriem seat at the upcoming 2022 assembly elections, deepening the intrigue in the Rane family a day after political discord between the father-son duo spilled into the public domain for the first time on Tuesday.
“The Central Election Committee has approved the candidature of Shri Pratapsingh Rane as Congress candidate for the forthcoming general election to the Legislative Assembly of Goa from 18-Poriem constituency,” said a press release issued on Wednesday by AICC general secretary in-charge of CEC, Mukul Wasnik.
Earlier on Tuesday, Goa’s political landscape witnessed a storm of sorts when minutes after the senior Rane announced his decision to contest the 2022 polls from Poriem on a Congress ticket, his son and Health Minister Vishwajit Rane reacted belligerently and conveyed, unusually through the media, that his father should “gracefully retire” after five decades of political life and at age 83.
Vishwajit even went to the extent of saying that if he (Pratapsingh) goes ahead and contests, he will cross swords with his father in Poriem on the BJP ticket and defeat him by a margin of 10,000-plus votes.
The senior Rane has had uninterrupted innings in the Goa legislative assembly first from the erstwhile Sattari and later Poriem constituencies since he first got elected in the early 1970s.
Originally from the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP), Rane Sr, quit the regional party over differences with its then supremo and chief minister the late Sashikala Kakodkar to join the Congress (Urs) in the mid-1970s.
He has stayed put with the Congress since then and has never lost an election. He has also become Chief Minister of Goa half-a-dozen times, including an uninterrupted (1980-90) 10-year stint in 1980, 1984, 1989, 1994 and twice in 2005.
