Twelve Trinamul Congress MPs met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday to demand early introduction of a constitutional amendment to change the name of West Bengal to Bangla.
“We went to meet the Prime Minister as a follow-up to our chief minister’s letter in which she urged the Centre to do the needful to change the name of the state,” Trinamul MP Sudip Bandyopadhyay said.
The 15-minute meeting took place at the Prime Minister’s conference hall on the Parliament premises. Besides Bandyopadhyay, the team included MPs Abhishek Banerjee, Derek O’Brien, Sisir Adhikari, Saugata Roy, Sukhendu Shekhar Roy, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar and Mahua Moitra.
The Trinamul government has been trying since 2011 to change the name of the state. In the letter to the Prime Minister, Mamata had said the Assembly had passed a resolution in July 2018 to change the name of the state from West Bengal to Bangla.
The delay in the name change came up for discussion in the Assembly earlier this month after junior Union home minister Nityanand Rai told Parliament that no step had been initiated in this regard.
“We presented (to Modi) all the communications between the Centre and the state over the issue. We also requested him to ensure that the constitutional amendment is done in this session of the House,” Bandyopadhyay said.
Though there was no communication from the PMO, two pictures of the meeting were posted on the Prime Minister’s official Twitter handle.
Multiple MPs who attended the meeting told this newspaper that the meeting went off well and that Modi asked about the process of changing the name. “He asked whether the amendment needed a two-third majority in the House or a simple majority would be enough,” said an MP.
The Trinamul delegation also told Modi about the party’s opposition to the Centre’s plan to divest public sector units, especially Air India.