Shinde further pointed out that the Mumbai-Pune Expressway was implemented by then PWD Minister Nitin Gadkari and was inaugurated in 2000.
The Shiv Sena demanded that the upcoming Nagpur-Mumbai Super Communication Expressway (NMSCE) should be named after its late patriarch Bal Keshav Thackeray.
Shiv Sena leader and PWD Minister Eknath Shinde led a delegation of party MLAs to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Monday and submitted a memorandum demanding that the NMSCE be named after the late Thackeray. Speaking to media, he said that the then Shiv Sena Pramukh Bal Thackeray was the architect of the country's first-ever expressway project, the Mumbai-Pune Yeshwantrao Chavan Expressway, which came up during the tenure of the first Shiv Sena-BJP alliance government in 1995.
He further pointed out that the Mumbai-Pune Expressway was implemented by then PWD Minister Nitin Gadkari and was inaugurated in 2000.
He said that since the Sena MLAs and MLCs from Marathwada, Vidarbha and north Maharashtra region have worked day and night to convince the farmers to give land for this project, they have made this demand. `I myself toured various villages which are falling on the Mumbai-Nagpur Expressway and convinced farmers to give their land for the project. The farmers are adequately compensated and 90 per cent of land acquisition is complete. Thus, Sena wants to name the proposed Expressway after Balashaeb Thackeray,' he said.
Urging Fadnavis to do the needful, he said that it would be a fitting tribute to Bal Thackeray if the Nagpur-Mumbai Super Communication Expressway is named after the man who was the guiding spirit behind the Mumbai-Pune Expressway project.
However, a section of the ruling ally Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is keen to name the NMSCE after the late Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who died three months ago.
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