The sparring between the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena faction and the Eknath Shinde-led rebel camp, allied with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), over the renaming of two cities in Maharashtra continued in earnest with Sena MP Sanjay Raut on Friday criticising the Eknath Shinde-Devendra Fadnavis government’s move to ‘review’ Mr. Thackeray’s final decision to rename Aurangabad and Osmanabad cities to ‘Sambhajinagar’ and ‘Dharashiv’ respectively.
Prior to the floor test following Mr. Shinde’s intra-party revolt that toppled the erstwhile MVA government, Mr. Thackeray in his final cabinet meeting on June 29 had taken a last-minute decision to rename Aurangabad, Osmanabad and the Navi Mumbai airport after the veteran Socialist politician D. B. Patil.
The renaming of Aurangabad to ‘Sambhajinagar’ – first mooted by the late Sena founder Bal Thackeray in the 1980s – had been a flashpoint between the Mr. Thackeray-led Sena and the BJP, after the latter accused the former for going ‘soft’ on Hindutva following Mr. Thackeray’s alliance with the ideologically opposed Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Congress.
