The Centre had first rejected the West Bengal Assembly resolution to rename the State as the difficult-to-spell Poshchimbongo, which happened to retain the unnecessary directional indicator (poshchim for west). Then it turned down the same State government's resolution to turn the name into Bangla in Bengali language, Bangal in Hindi and Bengal in English. Finally, the State legislature has settled for Bangla in all languages.
The West Bengal Assembly passed a resolution today to rename the State as 'Bangla' in three languages -- Bengali, English and Hindi.
The move is aimed at climbing the alphabetical sequence of State names in which West Bengal appears last in the list now.
The State will have to wait for the nod from the Home Ministry for a final approval on the resolution.
Earlier, the Centre had rejected the State government's proposals of having three names Bangla (in Bengali), Bengal (in English) and Bangal (in Hindi).
The Mamata Banerjee government's proposal of renaming West Bengal as "Paschim Bango" in 2011 was also turned down by the Centre.
The main reason for the name change is believed to be to emotionally appeal to the Bengali voters. Another reason for choosing 'b' as the initial for the name is Yojana Bhawan's allocation. It allocates money to States in the alphabetical order. West Bengal used to get it last because its name started with a 'w'. Renaming the State as Bangla will make it one of the first States to get allocations after Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh etc.
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