The previous Maha Vikas Aghadi government’s decision to rename Aurangabad is illegal, said Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde on Friday, PTI reported. Shinde said the decision would be reviewed again and approved afresh in the next Cabinet meeting.
In the last Cabinet meeting of the Maha Vikas Aghadi government on June 29, the Uddhav Thackeray dispensation had renamed the cities of Aurangabad and Osmanabad to Sambhaji Nagar and Dharashiv.
Aurangabad was named after Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. It is now named after 17th century ruler Sambhaji, who was the eldest son of Shivaji, the founder of the Maratha empire. Renaming Aurangabad had long been on Shiv Sena’s political agenda with party founder Bal Thackeray first raising the demand in 1988.
The renaming was one of the last decisions taken by Uddhav Thackeray before he resigned as the chief minister. His stepping down from office was caused due to a split in the Shiv Sena after 40 of its MLAs, led by Shinde, joined hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party to form a government in Maharashtra. Thackeray-led faction had been reduced to a minority in the party.
The next day, on June 30, Shinde was sworn in as the chief minister of Maharashtra.
“The MVA government took the decision to rename Aurangabad as Sambhajinagar in its last Cabinet meeting when it had been reduced to a minority government,” Shinde said on Friday, PTI reported. “Holding a Cabinet meeting [in such a situation] was illegal.”
Shinde said that the announcement to rename the city was made by the party founder decades ago.
“The name Sambhajinagar is already there, we will ratify it in the next Cabinet meeting,” he said, adding that this will make the decision “legally safe”.
The Shinde-led camp had rebelled against Thackeray, demanding that he sever his ties with the Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress.
The revolt had pushed the state into a crisis. Subsequently, the BJP demanded Thackeray to face a vote of confidence. But he resigned after the Supreme Court rejected the Shiv Sena’s plea against facing a floor test.
On Friday, Shinde said he rebelled against the Shiv Sena leadership “to save the party and its workers”, PTI reported.
“We [Shiv Sena] got nothing politically despite having our chief minister in the three-party dispensation,” he said. “We finished fourth in nagar panchayat elections.”
Meanwhile, former MP and Shiv Sena leader from Aurangabad Chandrakant Khaire said that the party workers will stage a protest if the city’s name was not changed within a month, PTI reported.
Khaire, a Thackeray loyalist, said that the Shinde-led government’s decision to stay the renaming was an insult to Sambhaji.
“Why the BJP didn’t carry out renaming when it was in power from 2014-19?” he asked. “The BJP-led central government did not even pass the proposal to name the Aurangabad airport [after Sambhaji].”
Aurangabad district Shiv Sena chief Ambadas Danve also said that the delay in renaming the city was unacceptable.
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