Yogi govt is hunting for a new name for Agra

Continuing its name changing spree after assuming charge of the state, the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh was now mulling to rechristen Agra, popularly known as the 'City of Taj'.

According to the sources, the government has asked the state-owned Agra based Ambedkar University to look for an ''appropriate'' name for the town.

Sources said that the state government wanted the varsity to verify claims made by some BJP and saffron leaders that the name of the town was 'Agravan' before it was named 'Agra'.

''The varsity will look into the claims and submit a report to the government explaining under what circumstances the earlier name was changed,'' said a senior state government official here on Monday.

BJP lawmaker from the town Jagan Prasad Garg, who had been demanding the renaming of the town, said that the Muslim rulers had changed the name of the city from 'Agravan' to Agra.

Earlier the Yogi Adityanath government had rechristened 'Sangam' (confluence of Ganga, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati rivers) town of Allahabad as 'Prayagraj' on persistent demand of the Hindu seers.

The state government had also recently made Ayodhya a district and the town of Faizabad was included in it. Earlier Ayodhya was in Faizabad district.

According to the sources, some more towns could be rechristened in the days to come. Saffron leaders have demanded rechristening of Muzaffarnagar and Sultanpur towns in UP.

The opposition parties termed it as a ''desperate tactic'' by the saffron party to ''divert attention'' of the people from its ''failures''.

''This government thinks that development will come by changing the names...the truth is that the BJP government has failed on all fronts and is now trying to divert the attention of the people from its failures, it is changing the names of the towns,'' said Samajwadi Party (SP) supremo Akhilesh Yadav here.