Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.
Credit: PTI Photo
After a campaign of close to three decades, the Maharashtra government has formally renamed Aurangabad as Chhatrapati SambhajiNagar and Osmanabad as Dharashiv.
The gazette notification on the renaming of the two districts of the Marathwada region was issued on the eve of Saturday’s special Cabinet meeting for the region.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, Deputy Chief Ministers Devendra Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar and their Cabinet colleagues, top bureaucrats of the state are in Chhatrapati SambhajiNagar for the meeting which comes ahead of the Marathwada Liberation Day, also known as Marathwada Mukti Sangram Din.
India attained Independence on August 15, 1947, but the Marathwada region was liberated on September 17, 1948 from the Nizam Rule.
The process to rename the district had started when the Shiv Sena-BJP government came to power in Maharashtra in 1995 and late Shiv Sena supremo Balasaheb Thackeray wanted the name of the two districts changed.
However, due to some or the other reasons and litigation, it could not happen.
The decision to rename Aurangabad and Osmanabad was taken in the previous Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government's last cabinet meeting on June 29, 2022 just before Thackeray resigned as CM.
However, Shinde and Fadnavis, who were sworn in a day later, had said the Thackeray-led dispensation's decision to rename these places was illegal as they had taken after the Governor had asked them to prove majority in the state assembly.
In July last year, the Shinde government gave a cabinet approval to rename Aurangabad and Osmanabad cities as Chhatrapati SambhajiNagar and Dharashiv, respectively. It may be mentioned, in the MVA government's last cabinet meeting, Aurangabad was renamed as SambhajiNagar, but the Shinde government added 'Chhatrapati' prefix to it.
Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj is son of legendary Maratha warrior Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. Sambhaji Maharaj was killed at the behest of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, after whom the Aurangabad city has been named.