Uttar Pradesh: Nearly three years after the Uttar Pradesh government renamed the Faizabad district as ‘Ayodhya’, the district’s railway station has been renamed as well. The Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) informed in a tweet on Saturday, “UP CM Shri @myogiadityanath has decided to rename Faizabad railway junction as Ayodhya Cantt.”
The Uttar Pradesh government is undergoing yet another renaming operation. Apart from renaming Faizabad as Ayodhya in November 2018 on the occasion of Diwali, the ruling dispensation also renamed Allahabad as Prayagraj in October of the same year. In June 2018, the over century old Mughalsarai railway station was renamed after Deen Dayal Upadhyay, a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) ideologue. The RSS is the ideological mentor of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is currently in power in both the state and the centre.
In recent years, several groups in Uttar Pradesh have demanded the change in names of various other districts as well. These include Azamgarh to Aryamgarh, Aligarh to Harigarh, Agra to Agravan etc.
The UP CMO’s declaration comes just months before the northern state’s elections. The Ram Mandir, which is now under construction at Ayodhya, is likely to be a key issue during the assembly elections, which are expected to take place in February-March 2022. The ruling BJP had also justified the name changes across Uttar Pradesh, saying they are merely restoring older names and correcting historical distortions.