Around a dozen municipal wards with Muslim names were renamed after Hindu leaders, seers and poets in Gorakhpur, the home town of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.
The Gorakhpur Municipal Corporation on Saturday released a list of the wards with their new names.
According to the list, Mohaddipur, Mian Bazar, Alinagar, Muftipur, Turkmenpur, Ismailpur, Rasoolpur, Humayunpur North, Dawood Pur, Zafra Bazar, Ilahi Bagh, Quazipur Khurd and some other wards have been rechristened.
Some wards with Muslim names were renamed after freedom fighters Sardar Bhagat Singh and Ram Prasad Bismil, Lord Hanuman, Digvijay Nath, a formed Mahant of the Gorakhnath Temple of which Adityanath is the current Mahant. Dawood Pur ward has been renamed as Raghupati Sahai alias Firaq Gorakhpuri, the famous Urdu poet.
The district officials rejected assertions that there was any 'motive' behind the renaming of the wards. "Many wards with Hindu names have also been rechristened," said an official in Gorakhpur.
Adityanath, in his first stint as CM, had re-named Faizabad railway station as Ayodhya Cantt and Allahabad as Prayagraj. The saffron outfits had been pressing the state government to change the names of Sultanpur, Mirzapur, Aligarh, Firozabad and Mainpuri. Such a demand had been made during the first term of Adityanath. There was also a proposal to change the names of Ghazipur and Basti districts.
While addressing public meetings before the recent Lok Sabha bypoll at Azamgarh, Adityanath had hinted at changing the name of the district to 'Aryangarh'.
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