Mumbai: The Mumbai High Court on Wednesday dismissed a bunch of petitions challenging the decision of the Maharashtra government to rename Aurangabad district as Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar and Osmanabad as Dharashiv, saying that name does not change anything and calling a rose by a different name would not change the essence of the flower.

A division bench comprising Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Arif Doctor said the petitions challenging the renaming were bereft of merits and the notification issued by the Maharashtra government for renaming does not warrant any interference.

The bench, while quoting William Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet, said “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” adding that Shakespeare made a profound observation about the nature of names and says that a name does not make something that it is and even if rose had a different name other than “rose”, the essence of the flower would not change and it would still be the same.

The High Court said that the Maharashtra Land Revenue Code (MLRC) permits the state government to abolish any revenue area and to name or rename and alter the name of the area and it has no hesitation to conclude that the state government followed the statutory provisions before taking the decision to rename the two districts and cities.

“We have no hesitation to conclude that so far as the challenge made by the Petitioners to rename the revenue areas of Aurangabad and Osmanabad to Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar and Dharashiv, respectively, is concerned, the statutory provisions contained in Section 4 of the MLRC have been followed and in absence of any procedural flaw, we are unable to subscribe to the submissions made by the petitioners,” the High Court said.

The High Court said that the issue of alteration of name of a revenue area or even of a city or a town is not justiciable for the reason that the courts lack the requisite tool to adjudicate such an issue in absence of any judicially manageable or discoverable standard.

“As to by what name a particular object is to be known cannot be judicially reviewed unless the name so proposed is atrocious,” the High Court said.

A gazette notification was issued by the Maharshtra government changing the names of Aurangabad as Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar and Osmanabad as Dharashiv after the Union Home Ministry gave a no objection letter for changing the names of the cities and districts in February last year.

A bunch of petitions were filed challenging the decision to rename Aurangabad and Osmanabad, terming the decision of the government as “politically motivated”, however, the state government opposed plea, claiming the two places were renamed due to their history and not for any political reasons.