Now, Maharashtra CM refers to Osmanabad as Dharashiv

MUMBAI: The Shiv Sena erased all doubts about its stand on renaming certain cities when on Wednesday CM Thackeray referred to Osmanabad as Dharashiv (named after 6th century caves) in a tweet, days after using Sambhajinagar for Aurangabad on the official CMO handle, reports Sujit Mahamulkar.
While the Sena chief has always referred to Osmanabad as Dharashiv in his speeches, this is the first time he did so on the CMO’s handle.This time there was no response from Congress and NCP, unlike when he mentioned Sambhajinagar for the first time on January 6.
After the Sambhajinagar tweet, the Congress had raised an objection within three hours.
At the time, state Congress leader Balasaheb Thorat had said that no one should use the name of Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj to play politics. The NCP had said that such renaming was not part of the common minimum programme.
Reacting to the Congress and NCP objections, Thackeray had on January 8 said that Aurangzeb was not a secular person, so he anyway did not fit into the common minimum programme of the MVA.
On Wednesday, the state cabinet approved a government medical college in Osmanabad with a student capacity of 100 and a 430-bed hospital, and Thackeray’s tweet was to announce this.
The tweet, which was in Marathi, said the state cabinet had approved a government medical college in “Dharashiv-Osmanabad”. It carried a prominent photograph of minister for medical education Amit Deshmukh of the Congress while there was a small photograph of Maha Vikas Aghadi leaders Uddhav Thackeray, deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar of the NCP and revenue minister Balasaheb Thorat of the Congress in a corner.
Osmanabad is named after the last ruler of Hyderabad, Mir Osman Ali Khan, while Dharashiv is derived from the name for the sixth-century caves near the city.
A Congress minister who was contacted for comment refused to react, suggesting state Congress president Thorat be contacted. There was no reaction from the Congress on Twitter, unlike a week ago.
For 25 years at least, the Shiv Sena has referred to Aurangabad as Sambhajinagar, Osmanabad as Dharashiv and Ahmednagar as Nagar in its mouthpiece Saamna.
Thackeray follows the same policy in his speeches, which now the chief minister’s office is following on the CMO Maharashtra Twitter handle.
During the 1995-1999 Sena-BJP alliance government, the state had issued a notification about renaming Aurangabad city, but a Congress corporator had gone on to move court on it.
The Supreme Court had put a stay on the notification, which was withdrawn by the Congress government after 1999.