Bengal to send another proposal to Centre over renaming state

The West Bengal government will send another proposal to the Central government seeking to change the name of the state to Bangla in all three languages - Bengali, Hindi and English.

A year ago, the West Bengal Assembly passed a resolution proposing the name of the state be changed to 'Bangla' in Bengali, 'Bengal' in English and 'Bangal' in Hindi, but the Central government had rejected the proposal.

"We will send another proposal of changing the name to Bangla in all three languages," state Education Minister Partha Chatterjee said here after a cabinet meeting.

Soon after coming to power in 2011, the Mamata Banerjee government had undertaken the renaming exercise.

Incidentally, the Left regime led by Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, which in 2001 renamed the capital Calcutta as Kolkata, had made a similar proposal. But the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress had opposed it tooth and nail then.

After the Partition of India in 1947, Bengal was bifurcated as East Bengal and West Bengal. East Bengal became a part of Pakistan. It was rechristened East Pakistan in 1956 and later emerged as the independent nation of Bangladesh after the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971.

--IANS

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