Shiv Sena hits outs at BJP over demand for renaming Aurangabad

The Shiv Sena on Monday slammed Maharashtra BJP president Chandrakant Patil for demanding that the city of Aurangabad be renamed as 'Sambhajinagar' after Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj's elder son, Sambhaji.

An editorial in Shiv Sena mouthpiece 'Saamana' reminded the BJP that"Aurangabad was renamed as Sambhajinagar by Sena supremo late Balasaheb Thackeray 25 years ago". The central Maharashtra city, now a prominent industry centre, was given its name by the 17th century Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb.

Patil last week demanded that the Shiv Sena-led state government rename Aurangabad as 'Sambhajinagar'. The BJP leader said "we are descendants of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj and his son Sambhaji Maharaj, and not of Aurangzeb. Therefore Aurangabad should be renamed as
Sambhajinagar by resolving all technical difficulties".

Taking a dim view of Patil's remarks, the Shiv Sena said, "What was the need for him to say they are descendants of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. Nobody here is a descendant of
Aurangazeb." The BJP has been taking Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj's name in the last five years. But now, they have the "audacity" to compare Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, it said while referring to the controversial book, titled 'Aaj ke Shivaji: Narendra Modi'.

The BJP was in power in the state for last five years and it is still ruling at the Centre, the Shiv Sena noted. "Why didn't you (BJP) rename Aurangabad? Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has changed the name of Allahabad and other cities of UP. The BJP needs to remember that Aurangabad was renamed as Sambhinagar 25 years ago by Balasaheb," the Marathi daily said.

It said the BJP has neither given Bharat Ratna to Hindutva ideologue V D Savarkar nor laid a single brick for Chhatrapati Shivaji's memorial in Mumbai. "It only wants to play politics over nationalism," the Uddhav Thackeray-led party alleged. Notably, it was the Shiv Sena, the BJP's friend-turned-foe, which had first demanded to rename of Aurangabad as Sambhajinagar decades ago.

A proposal to rename the city was passed by the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation in June 1995, but it was challenged by a Congress corporator in the high court and later in the Supreme Court and made no further progress.

The Sena also reminded the BJP that the Ram temple in Ayodhya will come up only because of the Supreme Court. In its verdict last year, the apex court paved the way for the construction of Ram temple by a trust at the disputed site at Ayodhya and directed the Centre to allot an alternative plot to the Sunni Waqf Board for building a new mosque at a "prominent" place in the holy town in Uttar Pradesh.

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