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'West' to be soon dropped from Bengal

Last Updated 02 August 2016, 18:46 IST

Shedding the state’s geographical identity, the Trinamool Congress government in West Bengal has decided to drop the word ‘West’ and keep just ‘Bengal’ as the name of the state.

The Cabinet has ratified the change on Tuesday and is calling a special session to discuss the matter.

The state government passed the proposal to change the name of West Bengal to just Bengal, a move that was approved in a Cabinet meeting held at the state secretariat in Kolkata. Coming out of the meeting, state Parliamentary Affairs Minister Partha Chatterjee told reporters, “We’ve proposed that in Bengali the name of the state be Bangla or Banga. In English, the name will be just Bengal.” The administration took the decision for the sake of the people of the state, its heritage and culture, as well as to promote and protect its interests at the national level, he added.

Chatterjee further said that the government will convene a special session of the Assembly on August 26 to “discuss only this issue”. The session will be followed by an all-party meeting over August 29 and 30, where the issue will be discussed and the ruling party will urge all to accept the new name. During the last days of the Left rule in 2011, erstwhile chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s government had cleared a similar proposal. The proposal was to rename the state as ‘Paschim Banga’, the Bengali word for West Bengal, but the idea was shelved.

While, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has been toying with the idea ever since coming to power in 2011, the issue could not be taken up earlier due to other pressing matters, Chatterjee said. He pointed out that going by the protocol, the proposal has to be passed by the state Assembly and then forwarded to the Parliament, where it has to be ratified by both the Houses. While, the outlook of the Opposition parties in the state, namely Congress and the Left, has remained yet unknown, going by Union Minister of State Babul Supriyo’s enthusiastic acceptance of the proposal, it is likely that BJP would support the process.

“It’s a great idea,” Supriyo said. The BJP MP from the state, however, raised some practical issues related to the re-christening and pointed out that choosing the Bengali name would be difficult. Banga, which in Bengali is pronounced as ‘bongo’, is an instrument people play. “We shouldn’t have this name,” he said.

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(Published 02 August 2016, 18:46 IST)

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