The West Bengal Assembly  passed a resolution for renaming the state as ‘Bangla’ in Bengali and ‘Bengal’ in English, weeks after a proposal in this regard was put forward by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

Mamata said, “Everyone would be happy with the change of name of Bengal. The people of Bengal have accepted the name ‘Bangla’. We have given importance to that. Congress, CPM, BJP have opposed to the renaming of the state. If the opposition is doing this for the sake of it, then it is very much unfortunate.”

“Bombay has become Mumbai, Chennai has been renamed as Tamil Nadu and there are many other instances. The base is Bengal and we want to take everyone along with us. We are proud as Bengalis. Our intention is to make Bengal world famous. I hope this decision will be good for Bengal. There should be a brand of Bengal. We are proud that with your help, we could adopt this name,” she added.

The proposal to pass the resolution was approved by the special session of the West Bengal Assembly, which was convened on August 26 to discuss the renaming of the state. In 2011, the state government had sent a proposal to the Centre for renaming West Bengal as “Paschim Bango”, but that never got the green signal.

Another reason for changing the name of the state is that whenever there is any meeting of all states, West Bengal comes at the bottom of the list alphabetically.