Goa polls: It’s Rane vs Rane vs Rane in Poriem constituency

Represented by Congress leader Pratapsingh Rane for five decades since 1972, the Poriem constituency is now being contested by three Ranes -- Pratapsingh Rane’s daugther-in-law Deviya Rane (BJP), Vishwajit Krishnarao Rane (AAP) and Ranjeetsingh Rane (Congress)

PANAJI:On a dry and dusty afternoon, a convoy of seven MPV cars rolls up outside the glass facades of the Kamal Restaurant at Honda, a town located right at the foothills of the Western Ghats.

With Pratapsingh Rane (left) withdrawing from the race in the face of pressure from his son Vishwajit (right), who has fielded his wife Deviya Rane, the two other Ranes Poriem constituency -- Ranjeetsingh and Vishwajit K--are hoping to cash in on the fact that Deviya is only a proxy candidate. (Agencies)

The restaurant with its glass facade and a neat coat of paint stands out among the otherwise mud-tiled red-laterite bricked houses that make up the landscape in which agricultural land shares space with rocky outcropping and clusters of mud tile houses.

By the standards of this very rural part of Goa, Honda is a city -- it has a bus-stand, a swanky restaurant, a high school, an Industrial Training Institute and regular bus service. It even has a pastry shop. But more importantly, it lies at the centre of the Poriem constituency -- that owing to its unique geography is the state’s lone constituency to share a border with both Maharashtra and Karnataka in the north eastern edge of Goa and is a point where all campaigning politicians converge to take a break from the heat and dust of the trail.

Driving on these roads was once nearly impossible as trucks from the nearby Pissurlem mines would like the roads en route to the barge jetty to unload the ore. Today the dust has receded and the trucks parked away covered in tarpaulin, while driving from village to village is a breeze. With mining stalled for nearly a decade now (except for a brief period between 2016-18 when a few mines restarted) the town sports a completely different look.

Represented by Congress leader Pratapsingh Rane for five decades since 1972, the constituency is now being contested by three Ranes -- Deviya Rane, the daughter-in-law of current MLA Pratapsingh Rane, Vishwajit Krishnarao Rane (AAP), who was a runner up at the last two elections, and Ranjeetsingh Rane (Congress), whose father Jaysinghrao Rane was the first MLA to represent the constituency in 1963.

Vishwajit K Rane steps out of one of the MPVs flanked by two people, who with the white kurtas and black waistcoats appear to be quintessential Delhi politicians, and a group of others sporting AAP caps and other paraphernalia, and make their way into the cool confines of the AC restaurant.

From the first floor, Ranjeetsingh Rane, himself on a lunch break from his door-to-door visits, peers through the glass panel cautiously eyeing his rival and the motley group of AAP volunteers. Being in the centre of the constituency, Honda is where the campaigning candidates and their crew regroup between campaign forays.

“None of these guys stand a chance,” says a restaurateur from across the road. “It is pretty obvious which way people from here will vote.”

Sattari has since time immemorial been under the stranglehold of the Ranes, a clan of warrior chieftains from Rajasthan whose story of arrival in Goa changes depending on whom you ask. While to some they have come here on behalf of the Bhosles of Sawantwadi as mercenaries to defend against the Marathas of Kolhapur, others suggest that their clan’s history in Goa dates even further back to the reign of Yusuf Adil Shah of Bijapur (1490-1510), a Bahamani Deccan Sultan dating back to the pre-Portuguese days.

“The Ranes were known as ruthless mercenaries known for carrying out massacres as well as killing any royal emissaries or tax collectors who would try and bring them to book and were largely ungovernable. What began as a right to collect tax on behalf of the Sultanate ended up being them granted unhindered control over the lands under their possession without having to pay tax to the Portuguese regime as successive Rane revolts and raiders brought the Portuguese government to its knees forcing them to sign treaties with the Ranes that allowed them absolute possession and control of the lands,” Ranjeetsingh Rane, who also counts himself as a descendant of the Rane’s, said.

It has been sixteen generations since the first Rane -- said to be Satroji Rane-- settled in Goa. Ranjeetsingh and Pratapsingh count themselves among the fifteenth while the two Vishwajits are part of the sixteenth generation. Together the clan owns 12 mocassos (land grants) across Sattari with each the size of a village, while the rest of the land in the taluka is owned by the government (Forest department and revenue land).

Ranjeet’s father Jaysinghrao Rane, then a member of the Praja Socialist Party, was the the first MLA to represent what was then a single Satari constituency of the Union Territory of Goa, Daman and Diu. With Goa becoming a state in 1987 and the number of seats enhanced to 40, the constituency has been bifurcated into two -- Poriem now represented by Pratapsingh Rane and Valpoi by his son Vishwajit.

“Despite being a mocassdar (a term used to refer to the land owning Ranes that originates in the special privileges the Portuguese allowed the Ranes to tax-free ownership over the lands), Jaysinghrao was a staunch socialist and believed that the people who cultivate the land should be given ownership of the lands. It led to him crossing swords with Pratapsingh Rane which led to enmity between the two till his last day, Jaysinghrao didn’t even talk to Pratapsingh,” said Rajendra Kerkar, an eminent environmentalist, who lives in the Keri village of the constituency.

Pratapsingh Rane emerged on the scene after completing his Business Education in the United States. An avid equestrian, Pratapsingh was invited into politics by Goa’s first chief minister Dayanand Bandodkar and was first elected on a ticket of the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party.

“People from these areas were impressed by his education, his style and voted for him for his statesman nature. Back then most of the people were uneducated and illiterate and he kept winning elections,” said the aforementioned restaurateur who didn’t wish to be named for fear of his comments being held against him.

Over the last five decades, several people have tried to unseat the senior Rane, without any success. The only one who came close was Vishwajit Krishnarao Rane, who was a runner up on a BJP ticket both in 2017 and 2012. His father Kirshnarao Appasaheb Rane, a noted freedom fighter of the Azad Gomantak Dal, (an outfit that was aggressively taking up the cause for liberation of Goa) too tried to unseat Rane in 1989 and 1994 without success.

“The reason why the Ranes keep winning is a mixture of fear, respect for the Rane clan and more recently because of a carrot and stick policy Vishwajit Rane has adopted -- in which he assures government jobs to the people of his constituency, but if they go against him, he ensures that they are removed from their posts or in other cases he can even ensure that they are driven out of their homes,” said Shubham Shivolkar, now a member of the Aam Aadmi Party who hails from Valpoi.

“But now with the younger generation being educated things stand to change,” he says.

With the benefits of the Mundkar Act (right to homestead) not being extended to the mocasso lands held by the Ranes, even till date, people who live and till the lands held by the Ranes have not been granted titles to the lands that they are living on making them vulnerable to eviction and at the mercy of the Ranes.

“Unlike other parts of Goa where the politics of the Bahujan Samaj took root in Goa thanks to Goa’s first chief minister Bahusaheb Bandodkar, in Sattari ever since the first elections the people have been beholden to the Ranes with the promise that they will be rewarded either with a government job or other means,” Kerkar said.

“They know that the Ranes retain the winnability and with the winnability, it’s possible to offer jobs,” he added. It is no surprise that 95% of the jobs in the Health Department go to people from the Sattari even if it comes at the cost of the rest of the state, it helps Vishwajit Rane get reelected in the constituency.

Such has been the dominance of the Rane clan, referred to as Kashe (loosely translated as esteemed) locally that unless your surname is Rane, it is difficult to even save your deposit in the constituency. There have been notable exceptions, but they are few and far in between.

There have been movements to help the villagers of Sattari get land rights, most notably the Sattari Bhumiputra Sanghatana set up to help press for the issue. But, while on the one hand the villagers know they have to fight for their land, on the other the biggest obstacle is the Ranes who have done little to ensure that land rights are transferred to the farmers. Unsurprisingly, the challenger political parties have pledged to give land rights to the people of Sattari with Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal promising to do so within six months of coming to power. Ranjeetsingh Rane has promised to take his father’s mission of giving the people their land rights in the true spirit of land to the tiller. It’s only Vishwajit Rane and his wife Deviya contesting from Valpoi and Poriem who have made no such pledge, and ironically, they are tipped to win.

But it hasn’t all been one way traffic. In December 2005, when the villagers of Saleli, Sattari felt they had enough, a mob of villagers confronted Prithviraj K Rane (the brother of present AAP contestant Vishwajit K Rane) and bludgeoned him to death over his insistence of setting up yet another stone crushing unit that produces basaltic grave after quarrying it from the lesser slopes of the Western Ghats. The crushers had become a menace for the village owing to the dust pollution. Pratapsingh Rane was the chief minister of Goa when the incident happened.

The locals have shown what unity can do when they stood up to the government that wanted to set up an IIT at Melaulim village and together forced the government and local MLA Vishwajit Rane to backtrack from their plan. But the unity hasn’t translated to electoral politics yet.

The closest to come was Vishwajit K Rane when in 2012 (seven years after his brother’s murder by the mob) he polled 44% of the vote while Pratapsingh Rane polled 55% of the vote. The rest of the contestants had to go home with less than 1% of the vote, polling even less than NOTA.

With Pratapsingh Rane withdrawing from the race in the face of pressure from his son Vishwajit who has fielded his wife Deviya Rane, the two other Ranes -- Ranjeetsingh and Vishwajit K are hoping to cash in on the fact that Deviya is only a proxy candidate.

But speak to villagers and they concede that the two men stand no chance against her.

“Vishwajit retains a stranglehold of the constituency having made himself the go to man, if the people of the constituency want anything done. There is little chance that the other two will make up the difference,” Kerkar said.

He recalled an instance when the senior Rane called for a function cum meeting to be held in the village square, this during the time Rane announced he would be contesting the elections one more time. Learning of the meeting, Vishwajit made a few calls and instructed none of the grassroot leaders to attend the meeting. The meeting turned out to be a dud. Word on the street is that had that meeting gone off successfully, Rane would likely still be contesting these elections.

“It was then that Rane realised that he had lost the grip of the constituency to his son,” a villager said.

Ranjeethsingh Rane, begs to differ. “The constituency has always been a Congress constituency and people know and recognise the symbol and the work the party has done over the last decades. Besides that, Pratapsingh Rane has publicly given me his blessings to contest,” he told HT.

No matter who wins, the clout of the feudal families over the villages and lands they own will continue for generations to come.