Chandrakant Patil pitches for renaming Aurangabad as Sambhajinagar

Maharashtra BJP chief Chandrakant Patil on Saturday urged the Uddhav Thackeray-led government to rename Aurangabad city as Sambhajinagar by removing all technical hurdles coming in the way. He was talking to reporters here after holding meetings for the April 20 local body elections.

"We are descendants of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj and his son Sambhaji Maharaj, and not Aurangzeb. Therefore, Aurangabad should be renamed as Sambhajinagar by resolving all the technical issues attached to it," Patil said.

Notably, it was the Shiv Sena, which had first made the demand to rename Aurangabad as Sambhajinagar decades ago. A proposal to this effect had been passed in the general body meeting of the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) in June 1995, which was challenged by a Congress corporator in the high court and later in the Supreme Court. Patil criticised the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government on the law and order situation in the state.

"The condition is getting worse day by day. No one wanted to head the Home Ministry and finally the portfolio went to NCP's Anil Deshmukh. We had urged Uddhav Thackeray to keep that ministry with him, but he didn't listen," the former minister added.

On the state government's loan waiver scheme, he said,

"The government has cited the model code of conduct for gram panchayat polls as the reason for not releasing the next list of names for loan waiver beneficiaries."

"If that is the case, then the government should withdraw all the decisions it had taken this week," Patil added.