The MEA has turn down CM Mamata Banerjee.
The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has scuttered CM Mamata Banerjee's plans to change the name of her state from ‘Bangla’ from West Bengal, saying the name sounded too similar to Bangladesh, reports the New Indian Express.
The MEA has sent letters to West Bengal Secretariat Nabanna and the Home Ministry saying that there would be confusion with Bangladesh, India's neighbour if West Bengal was called Bangla. The Union Ministry also doesn't want different names for the state when the medium of language changes.
However no letter has been sent to Nabanna regarding the same by the Home Ministry. West Bengal passed a resolution to change the name of the state to 'Bangla' in Bengali and 'Bengal' in English in a bid to raise stature in the alphabetical sequence of state names.
Efforts were on to change the name since 2011 when Mamata Banerjee took the office of chief minister of the state and discovered an annoying truth. The name of West Bengal always appeared at the bottom of the list whenever state representatives or event Mamata herself was supposed to address any meeting between the Union government and the states.
While West Bengal representatives always get chance to speak, patience of listeners wear out by the end of the meetings. Something similar happened – and provided the trigger for the latest action – when during the recent meeting of inter-state council meeting Mamata Banerjee had to wait the whole working day till 7 in the evening to get her turn to speak.
She had a host of issues to highlight like compensating revenue loss of approximately Rs 6,500 crore since 2011-12 to 2015-16, which has not been compensated and release of Rs 2,330 crore under the special backward region grant fund.
But Mamata told the waiting media personnel outside that few were willing to listen to her after the long hours.
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