Prayagraj Effect: Demands Rise For Changing Muzaffarnagar To Laxminagar, Sultanpur To Kushbhawanpur 

After restoring the names of Mughalsarai, Allahabad and Faizabad, Demands have been rising in Uttar Pradesh to revert back more cities to their ancient names discarding those imposed by Mughal and Islamic rulers.

Of many places suggested, Muzaffarnagar, Agra and Sultanpur are the prominent ones.

Muzaffarnagar would be renamed Laxminagar soon, said Sangeet Som, Meerut MLA while Jagan Prasad Garg of Agra North has demanded that the city of the Taj Mahal, Agra be renamed Agravan or Agrawal, reports The Hindu.

BJP legislator, Deomani Dwivedi, had in August moved a resolution in the Assembly for renaming Sultanpur Kushbhawanpur, after Lord Ram’s son Kush.

The old name of Agra was Agravan which came from the Agarwal trader community that lived there and the Hindi word for forests, van.

He has reportedly written to Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath demanding the name change “Agravan has a sentiment. (The Islamic era rulers) had imposed such names of slavery and changed the name of Agravan to Agra,” Garg substantiated his point.

Sangeet Som had also opined that there was a widespread demand to “restore” Indian culture which the Mughals had “tried to erase”.

The Uttar Pradesh government spokesperson Shrikant Sharma, has said that the government would “definitely consider” more requests to “restore” names of places.

“We are only correcting the mistakes and tampering committed in the past,” he said, adding that the government would take any initiative in line with “Indian history and culture”.