By IANS,
Mumbai : The Nationalist Congress Party, a junior partner in Maharashtra’s ruling coalition, Friday formally demanded that Mumbai’s major railway junction at Dadar be renamed Chaityabhoomi in honour of late Dalit icon B.R. Ambedkar, who headed the drafting committee of the Indian constitution.
The issue is prominently included in a charter of demands for the backward classes of Maharashtra released by the party on the occasion of its 12th anniversary.
The charter also includes the demand that the 12.5 acres of land belonging to a private mill near the memorial of Ambedkar at the Shivaji Park must be expanded and upgraded to make it a national monument.
Over a month after the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party and Ramdas Athawale-led Republican Party of India announced plans to join hands against the Congress-NCP Democratic Front government, state Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar raked up the forgotten issue of renaming Dadar station.
The NCP move, which expectedly created political ripples in the state, is aimed at countering the fallout of the emerging saffron-Dalit alliance in the state which is likely to be formalised before the civic body elections early-2012 in Mumbai, Thane, Pune and other cities.