Nitesh Rane, the son of former Maharashtra Chief Minister Narayan Rane, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday, PTI reported. Nitesh Rane will contest the Maharashtra Assembly elections on a BJP ticket from Kankavli seat in coastal Konkan.

Nitesh Rane had won the 2014 Maharashtra elections on a Congress ticket from Kankavli by defeating BJP MLA Pramod Jathar. However, he quit the Congress in 2017 and founded the Maharashtra Swabhiman Party. Nitesh Rane had earlier spoken about merging his outfit with the BJP.

Nitesh Rane had courted controversy in July after he and his supporters poured mud on a civic engineer and tied him up on a bridge near Kankavli. The politician and 18 of his supporters were subsequently arrested and sent to judicial custody. A court in Sindhudurg district granted all the accused bail on July 10.

Nitesh Rane’s father Narayan Rane, who is a Rajya Sabha MP, had apologised for his son’s conduct.

In 2017, Nitesh Rane had thrown a dead fish at the additional commissioner for fisheries in Sindhudurg during a meeting called to discuss problems faced by the fishermen in the Konkan region.

Now, follow and debate the day’s most significant stories on Scroll Exchange.