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