Lucknow: After Mughalsarai became Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Nagar, Allahabad was renamed as Prayagraj and then Faizabad as Ayodhya last week, the list of districts to be renamed is all set to become longer.
BJP leaders from various districts are sending letters to the Chief Minister’s Office, suggesting new names for their districts.
BJP MLA from Agra Jagan Prasad Garg has suggested that the name of this historic city be changed to ‘Agravan’. His contention is that Agra, as a word, does not have a specific meaning while ‘Agravan’ means the first among forests/gardens.
The demand to rename Lucknow as Laxmanpuri began three months ago when senior party leader and now Governor of Bihar Lalji Tandon, wrote about the history of the state capital in his book Ankaha Lucknow in which he claimed that the city originally belonged to Laxman and was known as Laxmanpur.
BJP leaders now want Lucknow to be renamed Laxmanpuri as a tribute to Laxman, brother of Lord Ram.
There is also a growing demand to rename Aligarh as Harigarh. “Why should there be any city in the name of Ali in our country? We want that this should be known as Harigarh,” said Prakash Gautam, a local BJP leader. Kapil Dev Agarwal, BJP MLA from Muzaffarnagar, claims that the city was known as Laxminagar and it was Mughals who changed it to Muzaffarnagar. He also claimed that he had put forth a proposal in this regard before Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath last year.
“It is not a new demand. In 1983, Vishwa Hindu Parishad had held a yagna in Muzaffarnagar and sought the name change. It’s no longer the Mughal rule. So, why should we keep their legacy here?” he asked.
The Bajrang Dal, incidentally, has been using Laxminagar as the name of the district in its posters and banners.
The BJP leaders of Azamgarh want their district to be renamed as Aryagarh and those in Kanpur want the district to be named as Kanhapur. “Kanpur has no meaning — it was known as Cawnpore during the British rule and later was pronounced as Kanpur,” said Ram Manohar Lochan, a local BJP leader.
