BJP urges Guv to desist efforts to rename West Bengal

The BJP state unit today urged West Bengal Governor K N Tripathi to ensure that the name of the state was not changed to 'Bangla' as it would sound very similar to Bangladesh.

The state Assembly had passed a resolution unanimously to this effect on July 26.

"We have urged him (governor) to send a proposal that the state be called 'Paschim Bango' in Bengali, Hindi and English," BJP state unit president Dilip Ghosh told reporters after meeting the Governor K N Tripathi.

Ghosh had earlier said that 'Bangla' will sound very similar to Bangladesh but 'Paschim Bango' will have a historic connection with the country's partition in 1947.

"We know the state Assembly had recently passed a resolution for changing the name to Bangla in all the three languages and to my knowledge this was the fourth such proposal. We oppose this," Ghosh, who led a seven-member delegation, said.

"We have requested the governor to send proposal to the Union Home Ministry to keep the name as 'Paschim Bango' in all languages," he said.

The move was aimed at climbing the alphabetical order of state names in which West Bengal appears last in the list now, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had earlier said.

The Centre had in the past rejected the state government's proposal of having three names -- Bangla (in Bengali), Bengal (in English) and Bangal (in Hindi).

The Mamata Banerjee government's move to rename West Bengal as 'Paschim Bango' in 2011 was also turned down by the Centre.