Ranas: Controversies mar the lawmaker couple’s political career

Ravi was also present during the midnight swoop on Ramdev’s protest at the Ramlila Maidan in Delhi in June 2011, when the yoga guru had to flee in the guise of a woman

Mumbai Navneet Kaur Rana and Ravi Rana, seemingly unknown names in the national circuit till a couple of days ago, have now become famous with their Hanuman Chalisa row, but they are not new to controversies.

Navneet, a Punjabi raised in Mumbai, got married to Rana along with 3,000 other couples in a mass marriage ceremony that was attended by Ramdev and then chief minister Prithviraj Chavan (Vijay Bate)

Ravi, who is a three-term legislator, belongs to the Powar community, which is included in the other backward classes (OBC) category. He heads his own outfit called Yuva Swabhimaan and is close to yoga guru Baba Ramdev.

Ravi was also present during the midnight swoop on Ramdev’s protest at the Ramlila Maidan in Delhi in June 2011, when the yoga guru had to flee in the guise of a woman.

Meanwhile, he became a familiar face in the corridors of the state administrative headquarters of Mantralaya even before he became an MLA in 2009, and was known for his proximity to Narayan Rane, who was then a member of Congress and a minister in the Congress cabinet.

Navneet, a Punjabi raised in Mumbai, got married to Rana along with 3,000 other couples in a mass marriage ceremony that was attended by Ramdev and then chief minister Prithviraj Chavan.

However, as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in Maharashtra, Ravi switched loyalties and veered close to then chief minister and incumbent leader of opposition Devendra Fadnavis. He projected himself as the leader of the bloc of independent MLAs.

Navneet Kaur Rana was elected to the Lok Sabha from Amravati in Vidarbha, a constituency reserved for the Scheduled Castes (SC), by defeating former union minister and Shiv Sena veteran Anandrao Adsul. Incidentally, Navneet had contested the 2014 elections against Adsul as a candidate of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and in 2019, fought as an independent with the NCP’s support.

Acting on a writ petition by Adsul, the HC in 2021 had set aside Navneet’s caste certificate, wherein she had claimed to belong to the ‘Mochi’ caste. She was also fined ₹2 lakh. However, the order was later stayed by the SC.

Adsul claimed that Navneet’s victory was driven by clandestine support from the BJP. “She could not have been elected without it,” he said, pointing to how she had lost by a margin of around 1.38 lakh votes in 2014.

However, despite the controversy, Navneet continued to grab eyeballs and mind-space through photo ops like working in the fields with farmers in the Anjangaon Bari village and posting videos mouthing dialogues from the movie ‘Pushpa: The Rise.’

She also launched caustic attacks on the Shiv Sena. Speaking in the Lok Sabha in March 2021, Navneet raised the issue of the “deteriorating” law and order situation in Maharashtra in wake of the Antilia bomb scare. She later alleged that Arvind Sawant, the Shiv Sena MP from South Mumbai, had threatened her in the Lok Sabha lobby, though the charge was vehemently denied.

Earlier this year, Rana and his workers were booked for attempt to murder after an ink attack on Amravati municipal commissioner Pravin Ashtikar on February 9. This followed the civic body’s move on January 16 to remove the statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj on the Rajapeth flyover in the town.

The issue was raised in the assembly by Fadnavis. Rana claimed that on the day that the ink attack happened, he was in a meeting with railway officials in Delhi, and that in the wee hours of the morning, his residence had been raided. He alluded to political motives behind the action against him.

However, home minister Dilip Walse Patil had said that the statue had been installed without taking permission from the district collector as had been mandated.

On the other hand, earlier this year, Navneet moved a breach of privilege motion against the police. The police had prevented her and her husband from going to Mumbai to protest outside Thackeray’s residence to seek aid for farmers and waiver of electricity bills. After this, notices were issued by the Lok Sabha secretariat to senior police officials like Director General of Police Rajnish Seth and others.

However, Jitu Dudhane, the Amravati district chief and state spokesperson of Yuva Swabhimaan, rejected the charge of the Ranas shifting their loyalties. “They (NCP) saw our elective merit and supported us. Since we want to develop our constituency, we have to stay close to those in power… such allegations are baseless,” he said.

On Monday, workers of Rana’s Yuva Swabhimaan wrote to Governor BS Koshyari and claimed, “Freedom of expression was being suppressed by the state government.”