The Maharashtra Cabinet on March 13 formally approved the renaming of Ahmednagar district to ‘Ahilyanagar’ after the 18th century Maratha queen Ahilyabai Holkar.
The decision to rename the district had already been announced by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde in May last year on the 298th birth anniversary of Ahilyabai Holkar, who had established Maheshwar (in Madhya Pradesh) as the seat of the Holkar dynasty.
The renaming of Ahmednagar follows the Mahayuti government’s decision to rename Aurangabad district as ‘Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar’ and Osmanabad as ‘Dharashiv’.
The demand for renaming Ahmednagar was started by BJP leader and MLC Gopichand Padalkar, an influential leader of the Dhangar (shepherd) community. The community has a special reverence for Ahilyabai given that the queen and her father-in-law, Malhar Rao Holkar — the founder of the Holkar dynasty — were Dhangars too.
Independent Sultanate
Ahmednagar was founded in 1494 AD by Ahmad Nizam Shah, who later established an independent Sultanate in Ahmednagar (the Nizam Shahi dynasty) after the break-up of the Bahamani Sultanate into five successor states known collectively as the Deccani Sultanates.
Meanwhile, the State Cabinet has also decided to rename eight railway stations in Mumbai by effecting a name change from their British-era ones.
The station name changes are as follows: Curry Road to Lalbaug, Marine Lines to Mumbadevi, Sandhurst Road to Dongri, Cotton Green to Kalachowki, Charni Road to Girgaon, Dockyard Road to Mazgaon, King’s Circle to Tirthakar Parshivnath, Mumbai Central to Nana Jagannath Shankarsheth.
Additionally, the Cabinet approved the purchase of 2.5 acres of land in Srinagar in Jammu and Kashmir to construct a Maharashtra Bhavan there.
