Hours after Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath rechristened Faizabad district as Sri Ayodhya, the Gujarat Deputy Chief Minister Nitin Patel on Tuesday said that the state government is keen on renaming Ahmedabad as Karnavati if it receives the required support and there were no legal hurdles.
When Patel was asked if the Gujarat government has any plans to rename the only city which has ‘World Heritage’ tag, he said, “People are still having a feeling that Ahmedabad should be renamed as Karnavati. If we get the required support to overcome the legal hurdles, we are always ready to change the name of the city.
“We can think of changing the name at an appropriate time,” Patel added. Sultan Ahmed Shah in 1411 A.D. had laid the foundation of a new walled city near Karnavati and named it Ahmedabad after the four saints in the area by the name Ahmed.
The opposition, however, attacked the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Gujarat over its “failed” promise to rename Ahmedabad to Karnavati. Slamming the state government, state unit Congress spokesperson Manish Doshi said that rechristening of Ahmedabad was another “poll gimmick” by the ruling BJP.
“For the BJP, issues like construction of a Ram temple in Ayodhya and renaming Ahmedabad as Karnavati are the means to get votes of Hindus,” said Doshi. Alleging that the ruling party has only cheated Hindus all these years only to come to power, he said, “BJP leaders dump such issues after coming to power. They only cheated Hindus all these years.”
Yogi Adityanath‘s announcement to rename Faizabad to Sri Ayodhya was also slammed by the opposition. While the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) called the decision as “Tughlaqi”, the Communist Party of India (CPI) described it as “a ploy to cover up its failure in governance”.
“This is BJP government’s ploy to cover up its failure in governance. At the same time, the name change also reflects its anti-Muslim feelings. First it changed the name of Allahabad to Prayag Raj and now their move is to change the name of Faizabad because they think these are Muslim names,” said general secretary S Sudhakar Reddy.
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