New Delhi: Delhi president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Adhesh Gupta on Thursday, April 28, wrote a letter to Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal requesting him to rename 40 villages in the national capital which he claimed had “Mughal-era” names.
In a letter posted to Twitter, Gupta wrote that there are many villages in Delhi which are still known by names which “symbolise slavery” and which remind one of the “sadness and pain of slavery”.
Gupta claimed that the Delhi BJP has identified 40 such villages and implored Kejriwal to rename them after “freedom fighters and great personalities”.
Among the Delhi villages that Gupta wants renamed are Hauz Khas, Saidullajab, Sheikh Sarai, Lado Sarai, Najafgarh and more.
“Delhi is no longer a sarai (resting place). It is the national capital of the country,” the Indian Express quoted Gupta as saying.
According to the newspaper, Gupta suggested names of personalities after whom these villages could be renamed, including constable Ratan Lal and government staffer Ankit Sharma, who were killed during the February 2020 northeast Delhi riots, Captain Vikram Batra, who was killed during the Kargil War, Valmiki, late singers Lata Mangeshkar and Mohammad Rafi, and athlete Milkha Singh.
Gupta, in his letter, further claimed that the members of the public residing in these villages wanted the names changed.
Gupta’s letter came only a day after the BJP’s Munirka councillor Bhagat Singh Tokas placed boards at Delhi’s Muhammadpur ‘declaring’ that its name had been changed to ‘Madhavpuram’. Gupta, too, was present at this event.
The ultimate power to change the name of a village in Delhi lies with the Delhi government. In a video uploaded to Twitter, Gupta notes that the resolution to rename Muhammadpur had been passed by the South Delhi Municipal Corporation and had been passed on to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government.
Gupta claims that the AAP government did not respond to the resolution for six months and thus the BJP workers, allegedly in the company of locals, put up the board reading ‘Madhavpuram’.
“We have done it at our end, now the Delhi government should tell whether it wants to change the name or not,” the Express quoted Gupta as saying.
This article first appeared on thewire.in
