Speaking to reporters after a meeting at the office of the Director-General of Police, Deputy Chief Minister R R Patil said although the city’s name had been legally changed to Mumbai from Bombay, some private entities and brands continued to persist with Bombay in their names.

The government had asked the state Law and Judiciary Department for its opinion on whether this could be changed, he said and urged the Shiv Sena to “not hurry” in enforcing this.

The Sena’s demand is seen as an attempt to outdo Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), which has sought to portray itself as the voice of the locals and pull the rug from under its feet.

In his Sunday column in the Sena mouthpiece Saamna, party spokesperson, Rajya Sabha MP and the newspaper’s executive editor Sanjay Raut had attacked establishments and institutions which continued to use ‘Bombay’ in their name despite the city’s name being changed to Mumbai during the rule of the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance.

Taking cue, Sena activists had blackened the boards of the Bombay Scottish School and showrooms of a textile brand and also burnt copies of a supplement of a national newspaper for using Bombay in its name.

Asked if the state was contemplating action against Raj Thackeray following a demand from the Maharashtra State Human Rights Commission on Monday, Patil said he was unaware of the recommendations of the commission. However, the police had served Raj a notice to prevent him from inciting trouble, he added.

The meeting with top police officers also discussed Naxalite activities in the state, the law and order situation and rising road accidents. The police would seek the help of Chartered Accountants (CA) besides depending on its intelligence network to crack down on economic crimes, Patil added.

24 Sena men held at BSE
Twenty-four members of the Bharatiya Vidyarthi Sena were arrested by the MRA Marg police station in South Mumbai on Tuesday afternoon for staging a protest at the Bombay Stock Exchange, demanding that its name be changed to Mumbai Stock Exchange.

The 24 men included Abhijeet Panse, president of the BVS, which is the Shiv Sena’s students’ wing. The activists were handing out pamphlets demanding the rechristening of the stock exchange, said police officers. According to the MRA Marg police, they had received information that around 20 to 25 members of the Bharatiya Vidyarthi Sena had gathered at the BSE premises, bearing flags and banners. “As a precautionary measure, before matters got out of hand, our officers had to place them under arrest under provisions of the Bombay Police Act,” said a police official from the MRA Marg police station.