Culture and heritage hub West Bengal, to be renamed

West Bengal may soon be renamed as “Bengal” as the state Cabinet today took a decision to change the name of the state. State minister Partha Chatterjee said the Cabinet took up a proposal to rename the state as “Bengal” in English and “Bango” or “Bangla” in Bengali.

Citing examples of other states like Odisha and cities like Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, he said the word “Bengal” has the state’s culture and heritage associated with it and so it was decided to change it. Earlier, the state government had sent a proposal to the Centre for renaming West Bengal as “Paschim Bango”, but that never got the green signal.

Now we are giving a new proposal and will convene a special session of the assembly on August 26 to pass a resolution to this effect, Chatterjee said.

Another reason for changing the name of the state is that whenever there is any meeting of all states, West Bengal comes at the bottom of the list alphabetically.

Our CM gets to speak last. There is little time left, a minister pointed out.

Secretariat officials said changing the name would require approval of Parliament.

On August 29 and 30, we will discuss the issue and urge all to accept the new name, he said.

The state’s Parliamentary Affairs Minister Partha Chatterjee said in an interview to NDTV that, the government acted ‘for the sake of the people of the state, its heritage and culture as well as to promote and protect its interests at the national level’.

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The ruling party in the state had decided to rename West Bengal to Paschimbanga in 2011, to raise the state’s position alphabetically. Besides TMC, Opposition parties led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) had also supported the move then.