New Delhi, July 20:
The Centre has approved seven proposals to rename cities and towns in the last five years, the Union home ministry told the Lok Sabha on Tuesday.
The ministry also confirmed that a proposal to rename West Bengal ‘Bangla’ had been received from the state government. “A proposal has been received from the government of West Bengal for renaming the state as ‘Bangla’ in all three languages, i.e. Bengali, English and Hindi,” Union minister for state for home affairs Nityanand Rai said in a written answer to a question.
In 2016, the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) government proposed to rename the state as ‘Bengal’ in English, ‘Bangla’ in Bengali and ‘Bangal’ in Hindi, which was turned down. A formal proposal to rename the state was sent again after the West Bengal assembly passed a resolution on July 26, 2018, to change the name of the state to ‘Bangla’.
Apart from the seven cities and towns that were allowed to be renamed, the minister, who was responding to a question by Trinamool Congress MP Sajda Ahmed, said a proposal to change the name of Nasrullaganj Nagar to Bhairoonda in Madhya Pradesh’s Sehore district has been received in the ministry in April this year.
Among the seven towns and cities allowed to be renamed over the last five years are Uttar Pradesh’s Allahabad, which was granted a no-objection certificate on December 15, 2018, to change its name to Prayagraj.
In the year 2017, the Andhra Pradesh city “Rajahmundry” was renamed “Rajamahendravaram”.
In 2018, Jharkhand’s town “Nagar Untari” name was changed to Shri Banshidhar Nagar. During the same year, Madhya Pradesh Nagar panchayat town, “Birsinghpur Pali” name was changed to “Maa Birasini Dham”.
In the year 2021, Madhya Pradesh’s “Hoshangabad Nagar” name was changed to Narmadapuram and “Babai” was changed to “Makhan Nagar.
In the year 2022, “Shri Hargobindpur” in Punjab was changed to “Shri Hargobindpur Sahib”.
