Name change of cities still ‘in progress’

July 23, 2014 11:53 pm | Updated 11:53 pm IST - Bangalore

It was on the Kannada Rajyotsava day in 2005 that an announcement on changing the State capital’s name from Bangalore to Bengaluru was made. However, the process of officially changing the name is still “in progress”, a good nine years after this declaration.

In a written reply to Congress MLC Ivan D’Souza in the Legislative Council on Wednesday, Revenue Minister V. Srinivas Prasad said the change of name of Bangalore and other cities, including Mysore to Mysuru, Mangalore to Mangaluru, Shimoga to Shivamogga, and Belgaum to Belagavi, were still “in progress.”

The renaming announced in 2005 was to be made official the following Rajyotsava day to coincide with the conclusion of the yearlong celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the State’s reunification (Suvarana Karnataka celebrations). However, the reply indicates that the official process is still dragging on. The written reply does not say where the process stands right now and what the hurdles are in its completion.

It was Jnanpith award winning Kannada wrier U.R. Ananthamurthy who had proposed the change of name from the anglicised version to the one that carries “the fragrance of the soil of the place.” Participating in a meeting convened by the then Chief Minister N. Dharam Singh, Prof. Ananthamurthy had noted that the names of many cities had already been changed with the same reasons.

Mr. Prasad, in his written reply, also said that change of names proposed by scholar M. Chidanandamurthy, of Uttara Kannada and Dakshina Kannada districts, was also “under consideration.”

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