New Delhi [India], July 3 : The Union government on Wednesday refused West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s demand to change West Bengal’s name to Bangla citing that a constitutional amendment is needed to change the name of a state.
The West Bengal government initially proposed renaming West Bengal as ‘Paschim Banga’ in August 2011.
The West Bengal Legislative Assembly passed a resolution changing the name of the State to ‘Bengal’ in English and ‘Bangla’ in Bengali on August 29, 2016.
On March 29, 2017, the Union Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejected Mamata Banerjee’s wish to rename her state to ‘Bangla’ from West Bengal, citing diplomatic confusion over a similarity with neighbouring Bangladesh.
West Bengal state Cabinet passed a resolution to change the name of the state to Bangla in three Languages – Bengali, English and Hindi – in September 2017.
In July 2018, West Bengal Assembly cleared name change to Bangla in three languages. Centre told the state government that they can accept only one name and not three. Then the House zeroed in on “Bangla”.
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