Mahua Moitra trolls Central govt's plan to rename Rajpath in New Delhi

|HT|

Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Mahua Moitra on Tuesday took a swipe at the central government’s plan to rename the iconic Rajpath in New Delhi as ‘Kartavya Path’, saying she hopes the new official residence of the prime minister will be named ‘Kinkartavyavimudh Math’, which literally means ‘bewildered monastery’.

The road and the area from the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose statue at India Gate C-Hexagon to the Rashtrapati Bhavan will reportedly be known as Kartavya Path. The pathway was created as a ceremonial boulevard during colonial rule and was designed on the lines of Kingsway in London.

The renaming of Rajpath, known as Kingsway during British Rule, is seen as the government’s attempt to shed the colonial past. In his recent speeches, Prime Minister Modi has emphasized the abolition of symbols that reflect the colonial mindset.

“I believe they’re renaming Rajpath as Kartavya Path,” the TMC MP tweeted. “I hope they will name the new Prime Minister’s residence as Kinkartavyavimudh Math.”

The Loksabha member from Krishnanagar also shared an excerpt from Sukumar Ray’s HaJaBaRaLa, considered one of the best nonsense stories of Bengali literature. In the children's novella, one used to give strange names to everything.

Under the Central Vista project, the Prime Minister’s residence will be shifted behind the existing South Block.

On Monday, Moitra hit out at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) shortly after reports of renaming the Rajpath as 'Kartavya Path' emerged.

“What is going on? Has BJP made it their sole kartavya to re-do our culture, our heritage in their megalomaniac madness re-write history?” she tweeted.

In 2015, Aurangzeb Road was renamed A P J Abdul Kalam Road. A year later, Race Course Road was renamed Lok Kalyan Marg. In 2017, Dalhousie Road was renamed Dara Shikoh Road. Also, Teen Murti Chowk was changed to Teen Murti Haifa Chowk in 2018. There have been several proposals to rename Akbar Road, but nothing has been done yet.

(Except for the headline and the pictorial description, this story has not been edited by THE DEN staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)