Mumbai: Nitesh Rane, son of former Maharashtra chief minister Narayan Rane, on Thursday jumped ship to the BJP ahead of the state polls on October 21. The development comes a day after Narayan Rane said his son would contest the upcoming state Assembly polls from Kankavli seat on a BJP ticket.
Nitesh Rane won the 2014 Assembly polls from Kankavli seat in Sindhudurg district on a Congress ticket by defeating the then BJP MLA Pramod Jathar.
The ruling BJP on Tuesday declared its first list of 125 candidates for the October 21 state polls, including names of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and state unit president Chandrakant Patil, but high-profile figures Eknath Khadse and Vinod Tawde were missing from it.
"Nitesh's name will figure in the second list and he will contest from Kankavli," Narayan Rane said. On speculations of merging his Maharashtra Swabhiman Party with the BJP, he said, "It is likely to happen in a week's time."
Rane Junior had hit headlines in July this year when he and his supporters, during inspection of the pothole-ridden highway, threw buckets of mud on engineer Prakash Shedekar at a bridge near Mumbai-Goa highway in Kankavali and later tied him to the bridge. Nitesh and his supporters were later arrested for the incident.
Reacting to the incident, Narayan Rane had said, "I have told him that it is wrong. We will apologise to the government official."
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