Mumbai: ‘Mashal March’ on August 9 to demand naming of Navi Mumbai airport after DB Patil

Members of the Navi Mumbai Airport All Party Action Committee, formed to demand naming of the Navi Mumbai airport after the late socialist leader DB Patil, has said it would organise a “Mashal (torch) March” on August 9 to press for their cause.

“On the occasion of August Kranti Din, we are again going to remind the government that the Navi Mumbai airport must be named after DB Patil. We will be taking the Mashal March to Talao Pali in Thane where a monument of freedom fighters is situated. Apart from that, people in other villages and cities will also gather at a central location in their area and stage the march. Our only demand is that the Navi Mumbai airport should be named after the leader of the people affected by the project — late DB Patil,” said Dashrath Patil, president of the Committee.

Earlier, on June 24, thousands of people from Thane and Raigad district had staged a massive protest rally against the City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO) in Navi Mumbai, demanding that the airport be named after DB Patil and not the late Shiv Sena Supremo Balasaheb Thackeray as sanctioned earlier at a board meeting of the CIDCO.

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Last year in December, state urban development minister Eknath Shinde had written to the CIDCO asking it to send a proposal of naming the airport after Thackeray – an instruction that CIDCO followed.

This move had outraged the people in Raigad and Thane who have since long been demanding the naming of the airport after Patil.

On June 10, state government’s announcement that the airport will be named after Thackeray led to the intensified protest of June 24.