Akhilesh Yadav and NDA ally Rajbhar attack UP government over renaming cities

India वोट Kar | November 15, 2018

Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, NDA ally go lyrical to slam UP government for renaming

Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav on Wednesday used a couplet on Twitter to criticise the Yogi Adityanath government for renaming cities in Uttar Pradesh, arguing that development work had stalled while only names were changing. He attached photographs of works he said had been halted.

The attack came a day after a state cabinet meeting chaired by Adityanath approved renaming Faizabad as Ayodhya and Allahabad as Prayagraj.

Criticism from within the NDA

On the same day, the government faced a verse-laden jibe from one of its own ministers, Om Prakash Rajbhar, who heads the Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party (SBSP), a member of the ruling NDA. In a tweet he said India’s spirit should be like Diwali, which contains “Ali”, and Ramzan, which contains “Ram”, to underline what he saw as the pointlessness of renaming.

Rajbhar, often described as a disgruntled minister, said renaming cities went against the country’s Ganga-Jamuni culture and that the money spent on it could have gone to education, jobs, health and welfare. He had earlier suggested the BJP should start by changing the names of its own Muslim leaders, naming Shahnawaz Hussain, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Mohsin Raza, and said renaming was meant to distract backward and oppressed people from raising their concerns.

Court challenge and other renamings

The cabinet’s move on the Faizabad and Allahabad divisions followed, by a day, a High Court hearing on a petition challenging the Allahabad renaming. A Lucknow bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Rajesh Singh Chauhan gave the state and the Centre a week to respond. The government had earlier renamed Mughalsarai railway station as Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Junction, and in August it sought the Centre’s approval for new names for the Agra, Bareilly and Kanpur airports, with Agra’s reportedly to be named after Jan Sangh founder Deen Dayal Upadhyay.

Competing views

Akhilesh Yadav had earlier accused the Chief Minister of seeking credit merely by renaming the city, and objected to Ardh Kumbh being called Kumbh. The Congress also said the change toyed with the nation’s history. The BJP has defended the changes as restoring older names and correcting historical distortions, saying Allahabad was once called Prayag before the 16th-century Mughal emperor Akbar built a fort near the Sangam.

Originally published on 15 November 2018. Rewritten on 9 October 2026.