Lucknow: The names of many cities and railway stations have been changed in Uttar Pradesh over the past few years ever since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power. In tune with the same, a gram panchayat in Unnao has proposed changing the name of a block in the district from ‘Miyanganj’ to ‘Mayaganj’.
Unnao District Magistrate Ravindra Kumar said the proposal in this regard has been sent to the Uttar Pradesh government.
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“The gram panchayat has suggested changing the name to ‘Mayaganj’. We have sent this proposal to the UP government for the next step,” he said in a video statement.
The process of getting a name change proposal passed by the gram panchayat was initiated after a letter earlier in July this year by BJP’s Safipur MLA Bamba Lal Diwakar, as per the Unnao District Magistrate’s letter to a senior official in Uttar Pradesh's Panchayati Raj department.
Hours after this proposal, Uttar Pradesh minister Rama Shankar Singh Patel demanded the renaming of Mirzapur as 'Vindhya Dham'.
“I want that Mirzapur should be known as 'Vindhya Dham'. Faizabad has been renamed Ayodhya and our government is investing crores of rupees in infrastructure at the Vindhya Dham in Mirzapur,” said Patel in a video statement.
“So, I hope that Mirzapur can be renamed. This is very important and is a matter of public sentiment,” he added.
Earlier this month, a proposal to rename Aligarh to Harigarh was cleared by the zila panchayat and the proposal has been sent to the state government.
If Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government clears the move to rename Aligarh then it would add to a long list of renamed places in Uttar Pradesh.
The state government had earlier renamed Allahabad to Prayagraj, Faizabad to Ayodhya and Mughalsarai to Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Nagar.