All in a name: BJP opposes renaming of West Bengal as 'Bangla'

The West Bengal unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday opposed renaming of West Bengal as ‘Bangla’. It said the state should be known as ‘Paschimbanga’. This was after the West Bengal Assembly passed a resolution to rename the state as ‘Bangla’ in three languages — Bengali, English and Hindi. The BJP said ‘Paschimbanga’ is connected to the memory of Partition and the word ‘Banga’ is also included in India’s national anthem. The party felt there was no justification to rename a state only to climb the alphabetical sequence of state names. Two years back, the Mamata Banerjee-led state government had cleared a new name for the state with three versions — Bangla in Bengali, Bangal in Hindi and Bengal in English. In response, the Centre had suggested the state retains one name. In any case, there is another problem with the name Bangla, as many on social media pointed out. 'Bangla' is also the term used for local unbranded liquor.

Cycle not for Tej

Twenty nine-year-old Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tej Pratap Yadav, a former Bihar minister and elder son of Lalu Prasad Yadav, would surely have hoped his “cycle yatra” would do the job of highlighting rising diesel and petrol prices, but the message was overshadowed by his spectacular tumble, as captured by the many mobile phone cameras of passers-by and journalists. The journey began well with Yadav cycling with a large group of people, but what undid the good work was his effort to speed ahead of the pack, egged on as he was by his supporters. His security personnel on bikes and on foot speeded up behind him only to find him sprawling at the next traffic roundabout. Yadav got back to his feet and jumped on his cycle but the whole “performance” had fizzled out by then.

RSS stands for...

The Rajya Sabha on Thursday took up a discussion on the “misuse of social media platforms and propagation of fake news causing unrest and violence”. Trinamool Congress member Derek O'Brien alleged that some “right wing supported” social media sites were spreading fake news, including Postcard News. He also alleged that the “RSS” was supporting such fake news, which led to protests from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members. Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu asked the reference to be expunged. O'Brien then asked if the abbreviation “RSS” had become “unparliamentary”. O'Brien explained that the abbreviation “RSS” referred to “rumour spreading society”. BJP members continued to object and the chair responded saying O'Brien had corrected himself. The reference was then allowed to go into the records.