AGARTALA: Reacting sharply to allegations of erasing the history of Mughals and changing the names of the cities associated with them, Union Home Minister Amit Shah has said that the BJP state governments have taken "well-thought decisions" which are within their statutory rights.
Shah, however, said that the BJP does not want to remove anybody's contribution to history.
The Home Minister's remarks came in response to allegations that the BJP is attempting to rewrite the country's history in which the BJP-ruled states have renamed or are planning to rename cities whose names are associated with Mughal history.
"The contribution of no one should be removed, neither do we want to remove them. But if someone wants to establish the tradition of the country then no one should have any objection," he said in an exclusive interview with ANI.
"We have not changed the name of even a single city which previously did not have an old name. Our governments have taken well-thought-out decisions. Every government has its statutory rights," Shah added.
Notably, Bharatiya Janata Party MP Sangam Lal Gupta recently urged Amit Shah to change the name of Uttar Pradesh's capital city of Lucknow to "Lakhanpur or Laxmanpur".
Stating that the city was earlier named Lakhanpur and Laxmanpur in the Treta Yug, the BJP MP claimed that Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula had renamed it Lucknow.
Shah, when asked about the allegations of writing a "re-imagined history" of Jammu and Kashmir, and erasing former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru's contributions, said that Article 370 was included in the Constitution by the government of the first prime minister of the country and this had caused great loss to India.
"Article 370 was implemented because of Nehru ji. Since 1950 it had been on our agenda that it should not have been implemented. It caused a great loss to the country. Now with the manner in which development work is going on in Jammu and Kashmir, the way terrorists and terror attacks are decreasing is being proven. You can see data. There are many changes which are happening in Jammu and Kashmir," he said.