PANAJI
Unarguably the most compelling personality in Goa’s politics, Pratapsingh Rane, who completes 50 years of uninterrupted innings in the Goa legislative assembly in January next year, is in a catch-22 situation on the question of contesting the ensuing 2022 polls.
Barely a week after announcing he will contest from Poriem on a Congress ticket and drawing an unusually belligerent and adversarial reaction from his son Vishwajit Rane who is health minister in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the senior politician has shown signs of backing down.
“As the elections are not yet declared, I have not taken the final decision,” the former chief minister said while speaking to local journalists in Sattari, which observers say is a sign of him backing down.
The senior Rane had triggered a mini-storm in the political arena when early last week he went on record with his intention to contest 2022 polls from Poriem, and he firmly said he would do so on a Congress ticket.
Minutes after his public assertion, his son Vishwajit reacted sharply saying his father should gracefully retire. He also went on to add that should he go ahead with contesting from Poriem, he (Vishwajit) will contest against him on the BJP ticket and defeat him by a marging of over 10,000 votes.
For several years now, Vishwajit has been managing all political work in the constituency on behalf of his father. Presuming the latter would retire from electoral politics, the health minister has been contemplating himself shifting to Poriem and fielding his wife Divya from the seat he currently represents in the Assembly -- Valpoi.
Rane clan supporters in their bastion of Sattari, meanwhile, are split between the father and son with a section of the older folks leaning towards the senior Rane but the youth overwhelmingly casting the die in favour of the health minister.
Nonetheless, political activists and observers believe that the unusual confrontationist posturing by the father-son duo could end soon with an internal family truce brokered by the matriarch Vijayadevi Rane.
For the record, however, the Congress has deepened the Rane family intrigue by declaring that the candidature of Pratapsingh Rane has been cleared by the Central Election Committee of the AICC.
It is too early to speculate if the 2022 battle for Poriem will indeed be a father v/s son duel in the end but how this never before catch-22 situation for the Rane family unfolds will be keenly watched by all and sundry.
