The name game starts again

As election nears, political parties resort to many games. In India and Maharashtra, the favorite pastime of political leaders is to give names to building, squares, roads, railway stations or whatever they can find. This has assumed such a proportion that nowadays, government plans projects later and anoints names before. As if to belittle the credit for erecting one of the great monuments in Maharashtra, a fresh controversy was started last week. On the footsteps of that controversy, now fresh controversy has been started this time again for the names.

In the inauguration ceremony of Bandra-Worli Sea Link last week, union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar sparked off the controversy by proposing to name the bridge after late Rajiv Gandhi. Opposition parties in Maharashtra were obviously enraged over the issue. Some parties like Shiv Sena even threatened an agitation.

Barely a week after that, a new controversy has erupted as the Maharashtra government announced on Wednesday to name the expressway linking Pune and Mumbai after Yashwantrao Chavan, first chief minister of Maharashtra. The Shiv Sena activits strongly objected to the announcement. In Pune some activists reportedly took out a rally upto e-way. Reports are that they hosted a board at the starting point of e-way at Wakad showing the name of the e-way after P. L. Deshpande. When the e-way was conceived, SS was in power. By the time the project was completed, it was defeated and Congress-Nationalist Congress Party alliance came to rule the state. At the same time, Deshpande died in June 2000. Hence SS chief Balasaheb Thackerey had expressed his wish to name the e-way after Deshpande. But that has not happened.

Obviously, Uddhav Thackerey, executive president of SS has expressed unhappiness over the announcement. He has said that by this step, Congress has insulted P. L. Deshpande. After witnessing majo r rows over Shivaji 's statue, this promises to be another big controversy before code of conduct comes into force.