December 9, 2019
Dr Santanu Sen raises the demand of renaming West Bengal to Bangla
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Sir, my Zero Hour is regarding renaming of West Bengal to Bangla. This is badly needed because the state of West Bengal, which has been progressing significantly since the last few years, is always at the bottom of the alphabetical list of the States. Therefore our Chief Minister and other ministers and officials hardly get any time or a very small time for expressing their views.
Sir, I would like to draw the kind attention of the House to the Article Number 1 of Indian Constitution which says that India, that is Bharat, is a Union of States, and not a federation. So the States can be changed, States can be renamed, States can unite and States can divide and the Article 3 of the Indian Constitution has given the power to the Parliament to take the decision regarding the changing the boundaries and names.
Our neighbouring state Odisha started their initiative of changing the name of their state from Orissa to Odisha in 2008 and the Odisha Alteration of Name Act came into force in 2010. So, far as the State of West Bengal is concerned: area wise it ranks 13th in the country, population wise it ranks fourth in the country, it’s GDP per capita is Rs 1,16,831 crore, which is much better than most of the States of the country, its literacy rate is nearly 79 per cent, which is much better than most of the states of the country. State’s CM Hon’ble Mamata Banerjee has been awarded consecutively as the Best Chief Minister of the country for several years. But unfortunately, West Bengal has been facing step-motherly attitude of the government for several issues.
Sir, I would like to let you know that after Hon’ble Mamata Banerjee became the Chief Minister, she gave a proposal that West Bengal should be named as ‘Pashchim Banga’ which was turned down by the Government of India. Again on August 29, 2016, three names were proposed by the West Bengal Legislative Assembly i.e. Bangla in Bengali, Bengal in English and Bangal in Hindi. Unfortunately, it was once again turned down and our West Bengal Legislative Assembly was asked to come up with a single name.
Then on July 26, 2018, a single name was proposed. It was resolved in the West Bengal Legislative Assembly that the name should be ‘Bangla’. Unfortunately, it has being appealed for repeatedly and it has been ignored by the Government of India repeatedly.
West Bengal is a state which is getting national and international awards, our Chief Minister getting the Best award for Kanyashree project. West Bengal is a state whose ‘Utkarsha Bangla’ and ‘Sabooj Sathi’ projects got awards from the United Nations
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