A day after a resolution to rename Aligarh as Harigarh was passed in the Municipal Corporation, the Mayor on Tuesday said that a proposal will be sent to the State government for approval.
“In the meeting held on Monday, a proposal was presented to change the name of Aligarh to Harigarh. Councillors unanimously supported the proposal. Now, it will be sent to the government. I hope that the administration will take cognizance and fulfill our demand. It is a long standing demand,” said Aligarh Mayor Prashant Singhal.
If Aligarh’s name is changed to Harigarh, it will join the list of places whose names were changed by the Uttar Pradesh government in the recent past. Allahabad was renamed as Prayagraj, Mughal Sarai to Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay Nagar and Faizabad was changed to Ayodhya. The demand to rename Aligarh dates several decades back with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) raising the demand since 1980s, claiming as per Hindu mythology the place is Harigarh.
In recent years the demand to rename several cities across Uttar Pradesh come up with Samgamlal Gupta, a BJP Lok Sabha MP, urging the government to renamed Lucknow as Laxmanpur, while Om Prakash Rajbhar demanded the state government to rename Ghazipur and Bahraich districts. In the last five years many other legislatures and elected representatives also demanded renaming of at least eleven districts and numerous places over Hindu figures in Uttar Pradesh.
A public interest litigation (PIL) petition in the Supreme Court is also pending which claims that there are at least 60 religious, historical and cultural places in Uttar Pradesh whose names were changed in due course of history allegedly by foreign invaders and needs to be renamed over Hindu deities and figures.
