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Maharashtra’s Aurangabad and Osmanabad cities have been renamed as Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar and Dharashiv respectively, the Ministry of Home Affairs said Friday, adding that it had approved the proposal as it had no objection to renaming the cities.
Earlier in February, additional solicitor-general Anil Singh informed the Bombay High Court that the central government had no objection to renaming Osmanabad. However, there was no decision yet on renaming Aurangabad, he submitted. A bench of Acting Chief Justice Sanjay V Gangapurwala and Justice Sandeep V Marne was then hearing pleas challenging a decision to rename the two cities.
The decision to rename Aurangabad as Sambhajinagar and Osmanabad as Dharashiv was taken by a cabinet meeting of the Maha Vikas Aghadi government on June 29, 2022, hours before Uddhav Thackeray stepped down as chief minister. In fact, it was among the Uddhav government’s last decisions.
Later, Chief Minister Eknath Shinde claimed that the decision was illegal as it was taken when the MVA government had lost its majority. On July 16, 2022, the Shinde government approved the proposal to rename Aurangabad and Osmanabad as Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar and Dharashiv.
Parties such as the Shiv Sena and the BJP had long demanded that both cities be renamed.
In the late 1980s, Aurangabad became one of the major cities outside the Mumbai-Thane belt that the Sena had set its eyes on. The city’s 30 per cent Muslim population made it a fertile ground for polarisation. Soon after the riots that killed over 25 people, in 1988, the Sena won the elections to the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation.
On May 8, 1988, the late Shiv Sena supremo Balasaheb Thackeray announced the renaming of the city as Sambhaji Nagar after Sambhaji, Shivaji’s son who was killed by Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. In 1995, the corporation passed a resolution to do so, and the Shiv-Sena led government issued a notification seeking suggestions on and objections to the plan.
The notification was challenged in the high court by then AMC corporator (of the Congress) Mushtaq Ahmed. While the plea was dismissed by the court stating that no decision had been taken, the renaming had remained a contentious issue and resurfaced ahead of every election.
Both the BJP and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena had been criticising the Sena for its failure to rename the city. Its MVA allies, the Congress and the NCP, have not been too keen to rename the city.
In March 2020, as a placatory gesture, the MVA government cleared a proposal to rename Aurangabad airport as Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj Airport.
Osmanabad derives its name from the last ruler of Hyderabad, Mir Osman Ali Khan.
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