Aurangabad airport to be renamed as ‘Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj airport’, says Fin MoS Bhagwat Karad

Significant announcement just days ahead of impending civic polls

@the_news_21

Mumbai: The Union Cabinet will shortly take a decision on a proposal to rename 13 airports in the country, including the renaming of Aurangabad airport in Maharashtra as ‘Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj Airport’. This was disclosed here on Friday by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and Union Minister of State (MoS) for Finance Dr. Bhagwat Karad.   

Dr Bhagwat Karad, a BJP Rajya Sabha MP, said that besides the Aurangabad airport, the Shirdi airport in Ahmednagar district is proposed to be renamed as ‘Sai Baba’ airport and the one in Kolhapur district as Mahalakshmi airport.

The Union MoS stated, “A decision in this regard is likely to be taken in the next cabinet meeting. Minister of Civil Aviation Jyotiraditya Scindia will soon submit a joint proposal to the cabinet in this regard. The Centre order (naming of the airports) will soon be forthcomings.” He further added that there was a demand from people’s representatives for the renaming of Aurangabad airport. 

It may be recalled that about two years ago, Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray had put forward a proposal in the Maharashtra Assembly to change the name of Aurangabad Airport to ‘Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj Airport’. 

As the civic polls draw near, the renaming of Aurangabad or transport infrastructure is overloaded with political connotations.  

The Shiv Sena is the single-largest party with 30 seats in the 112-seat Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC). Following the 2015 AMC election, an alliance of the Sena and the BJP had led to the former installing its candidate as Mayor.  

Now, with a bitter split between the two erstwhile saffron allies and the Sena allying with the ideologically opposed Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), the stakes for the AMC have never been higher.  

The induction of Dr. Karad, a former two-time BJP Mayor of Aurangabad as an MoS is a strong indication that the BJP means business in the upcoming AMC contest.    

The Aurangabad civic body polls, which was due to be held in April 2020, had to be postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic and is to be held later this year along with the Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Mumbai, Solapur and other civic body elections. 

According to observers, the BJP-led Centre’s decision to rename Aurangabad airport was possibly an attempt to steal the thunder from its estranged ally, the Shiv Sena. 

Under its late Sena chief Bal Thackeray, the party had been demanding Aurangabad be renamed as ‘Sambhajinagar’ (after Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj – Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj’s son and successor) since the late 1980s when the party was seeking to expand its influence beyond Mumbai city and the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR).  

Aurangabad which was originally a small hamlet named Khirki, was built by Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb on the foundations originally laid by the Abyssinian warlord Malik Ambar, the erstwhile prime minister of the ‘Dakhani Nizamshahi’ dynasty in the early 1600s. The city was later built by Aurangzeb in the 1650s to commemorate his first Viceroyalty of the Deccan. Later, during the Maratha wars, Aurangzeb eventually captured and cruelly killed Sambhaji (in 1689 CE). 

The Shiv Sena, in a bid to consolidate the Hindu vote-bank in Aurangabad and erase Aurangzeb’s link to the city, has been relentlessly pursuing the ‘name change’ stratagem. So much so, the issue has been the cause of a major rift between the Sena and its current ally, the Congress, which is resolutely opposed to the name change. 

Ever since the Sena formed the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition with the NCP and the Congress, the BJP has never lost an opportunity in taunting the former over its ‘Hindutva’ credentials, particularly over the Sena’s delay to officially rename ‘Aurangabad’ to ‘Sambhajinagar’.