Shiv Sena releases teaser for Uddhav Thackeray’s Aurangabad rally amid renaming row | Mumbai news

Mumbai: Laying the ground for chief minister Uddhav Thackeray’s public meeting in Aurangabad on Wednesday, the Shiv Sena has released teasers for his rally. These promos emphasise the party’s Hindutva credentials and its association with Aurangabad and the larger Marathwada region, where the Shiv Sena began spreading its wings in the late 1980s riding on the back of growing communal tensions.

Uddhav is holding the rally as part of the party’s outreach program in the state and in the backdrop of the controversies over renaming the city after Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj and All India Majlis E Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader Akbaruddin Owaisi’s visit to the tomb of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb on the outskirts of the city.

Meanwhile, the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is eager to wrest the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation from the Sena in the elections due later this year, has also targeted it over the chronic water crisis.

The Shiv Sena and BJP are locked in a game of one-upmanship over the name of the city, which is based on that of Aurangzeb, being changed to ‘Sambhajinagar,’ after Chhatrapati Sambhaji, who was brutally tortured and killed after being captured by Aurangzeb’s forces in 1689.

Uddhav is scheduled to address a public meeting at the Marathwada Sanskrutik Mandal ground in the city on Wednesday evening. The teasers released by the party have Shiv Sena supremo late Bal Thackeray, who enjoyed a talismanic appeal over the cadre, stressing the demand for the city to be renamed after Chhatrapati Sambhaji, and Uddhav affirming their affiliation to Hindutva. The rally will mark 37 years since the launch of the first Shiv Sena shakha in Marathwada at Gulmandi in Aurangabad.

Bal Thackeray, who was gradually reinventing himself as a mascot of aggressive Hindutva in the 1980s, had announced the rechristening plans for the city in a rally at Aurangabad on 8 May 1988. “It is not Aurangabad, but Sambhajinagar. The Shiv Sena has named it so,” the late Sena chief says in the video.

Though the Shiv Sena refers to Aurangabad as ‘Sambhajinagar,’ it has not been formally rechristened by the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government as the Congress is apprehensive of the impact this move will have on its Muslim vote base.

The MVA government has also put the ball in the union government’s court. Last year, Uddhav told the state legislative assembly that the renaming of cities fell under the jurisdiction of the Centre and not the state governments. However, leader of opposition Devendra Fadnavis has accused the Sena of going soft on the renaming to please the Congress and said the BJP would take the decision after coming to power.

Senior Shiv Sena leader and former Lok Sabha MP Chandrakant Khaire said that the rally would see a “record-breaking” attendance. On 1 May, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) president Raj Thackeray, who is also switching over to political Hindutva, had addressed a public meeting at the ground, and Khaire claimed that the Sena’s rally would get a better response.

The war of words between the BJP and the Shiv Sena has also intensified, with BJP leader and Union minister of state for finance Dr Bhagwat Karad and Khaire’s exchange.

Khaire said that the chief minister had taken the initiative to resolve the water crisis in the town and accused the BJP of unnecessarily raising the issue to corner the government. He also claimed that the process for the renaming of Aurangabad as Sambhajinagar and Osmanabad as Dharashiv had been completed and would be formally announced soon.

The BJP has targeted Shiv Sena, which has controlled the municipal corporation, over the water crisis in the city.

“We do not take Khaire’s words seriously… the BJP’s public meeting (held last month against the water crisis) was well-attended by around 30,000 to 40,000 people. It was an active mob and the people had taken to the streets for water,” said Karad, adding that he would felicitate Thackeray if Aurangabad was indeed renamed as Sambhajinagar.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Khaire lost to Imtiaz Jaleel of the AIMIM due to a split in saffron votes caused by the rebellion of then Sena MLA Harshavardhan Jadhav, who is the son-in-law of BJP leader and Union minister of state for railways Raosaheb Patil Danve.

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While his uncle and MNS president Raj Thackeray’s tour of Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh is in limbo due to his impending surgery and stiff opposition from UP BJP MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, Yuva Sena chief and Maharashtra environment minister Aaditya Thackeray will visit the temple town on 15 June to worship Lord Ram.

Shiv Sena spokesperson and MP Sanjay Raut, and urban development minister Eknath Shinde, along with other party functionaries, visited Ayodhya on Sunday. “We have no agenda to make this into a political event. This is not a show of strength. We are going there due to our faith,” said Raut.

Raut said that at a time when “Kashmir was burning and the situation was going out of hand”, ministers in the Narendra Modi-led union government had turned a deaf ear to the cries of Kashmiri Pandits and the killings of Muslims in the security forces.

“Instead, they were busy promoting movies like ‘Kashmir Files’ and ‘Samrat Prithviraj’. The Maharashtra government has said it would stand by the Kashmiri Pandits,” he added Raut.

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