Name game

With the civic polls in Kolkata due in a month, both the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Trinamool Congress are on a renaming spree. While the Left front-led Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) is focusing on roads, the Trinamool Congress is looking at what it controls — metro stations and, if you please, graveyards. The KMC accepted a proposal to rename the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass, a major road connecting the northern and southern part of the city, after Jyoti Basu — according to KMC rules, however, a person must be dead for at least two years before a road can be named after him/her. While one possibility is that the Left is afraid it may not win the elections and, therefore, needs to rename the road now, another is that it is simply keeping up with Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, who is busy renaming metro stations that come under her purview as the railway minister — Tollygunge has been renamed Mahanayak Uttam Kumar, Park Street renamed Mother Teresa, and Chandni Chowk has been renamed Tipu Sultan. Minister of State for Shipping Mukul Roy, a Trinamool Congress member, has renamed the Neemtala Ghat crematorium Rabindra Ghat — the land, it appears, belongs to Kolkata Port Trust, which comes under his ministry.