The Bombay high court on Wednesday upheld the renaming by Maharashtra govt of Aurangabad and Osmanabad cities and revenue districts each as Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar and Dharashiv respectively. “We have not doubt that the notifications renaming Aurangabad city and revenue district as Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar and Osmanabad city and revenue district as Dharashi do not suffer from any illegality or any legal vice,’’ said division bench of chief justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and justice Arif Doctor while pronouncing the judgment. The petitions are bereft of any merits and are dismissed, said the HC.
The Centre has approved renaming Osmanabad as Dharashiv, the Bombay high court was informed on Wednesday. A letter of no objection has been issued by the Union ministry of home affairs to J J Valvi deputy secretary, government of Maharashtra, general administration department.
The HC judgment comes in a batch of public interest litigation (PIL) filed Mohammad Hisham Osmani, Shaikh Masud and other local residents challenging decision of the CM Eknath Shinde led government soon after it took over last year, to change names of Aurangabad and Osmanabad.
Advocate for petitioners including Yusuf Muchhala and S B Talekar had cited the history of the two cities and complete disregard to the Constitution while changing the names. They had said the Maharashtra government’s Public Works Department (PWD) had already placed milestones on State highways showing the changed names.
The then additional solicitor general Anil Singh for the Centre said the Centre had given its nod for the name change.
State advocate general Birendra Saraf with government pleader P P Kakade said all rules were followed in name change procedure.
Last Jan, the HC had called upon the state government to explain the circumstances under which such a decision for renaming was taken and whether any objections were called for. The HC had also sought from the Central government, details and status of proposals submitted by the state government.
Other petitioners Mohammed Mushtaq Ahmed, 61, A B Khandare aged 73 and Rajesh More, 43 members of a residents’ committee had in July 2022 also said that the Maharashtra cabinet led by former chief minister Uddhav Thackeray had approved the renaming unauthorisedly for political considerations which even the new CM Eknath Shinde reaffirmed on July 16.
The PIL mentioned by counsel Mohammed Nawaz Haindaday had said the city of Aurangabad was founded in 1610 AD by Malik Amber, the prime minister of Murtaza Nizam Shah of Ahmednagar near a village known as “Khirki” and was filed by Nizam of Hyderabad up to the formation of state of Maharashtra under the provisions of States Reorganisation Act of 1956.
The state government had aborted its earlier attempt to change the name of the city in 2001.
While the erstwhile Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government led by former CM Thackeray had changed the name of Aurangabad to Sambhajinagar, the Shinde government added ‘Chhatrapati’ as a prefix to the name in a move that ought to be declared void, the PIL petitioners had argued.
The decision to rename Aurangabad as Sambhajinagar and Osmanabad as Dharashiv was taken during the last Cabinet meeting of the then MVA government on June 29, hours before Thackeray stepped down as the chief minister.