Lucknow: By issuing a notification, Uttar Pradesh government officially renamed the historical Mughalsarai railway station as the Deen Dayal Upadhyay Junction on late Monday evening. The move to rename the iconic
railway junction was initiated a year ago by Yogi Adityanath government after assuming charge.
The proposal was okayed by Yogi cabinet in June last year and it was subsequently approved by the Centre. However, it was finally implemented on Monday.
The Uttar Pradesh government informed the Governor in an official communication about the change made according to the Centre's nod in 2017.
The UP government had proposed to rename the junction, which is deemed to be Asia's biggest railway yard and the biggest coal mandi, in an attempt to revive the legacy of Upadhyay, an RSS ideologue whose was found dead with his body lying suspiciously at a platform of this junction in 1968. He was the former president of Bhartiya Jan Sangh, the parent organisation of the BJP.
In Uttar Pradesh legacies have changed with changing dispensations. Respective governments in country’s most populous state have, however, tried other tools to rewrite the legacy of their predecessors.
They tend to undo the legacy left by the previous government mainly by renaming cities, parks, places, schemes and programmes of the previous regime.
However, the move to rename Mughalsarai Junction led to a major furore in the Parliament after several MPs, including Samajwadi Party's Naresh Agarwal, protested against the Centre's decision to give the nod to renaming the junction after Upadhyay. Many of the Congress MPs wanted the junction to be renamed after late Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri who was born here. However, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal welcomed the state government’s step through a tweet.
The Mughalsarai Junction was set up by the British in the 1800s as a key station linking New Delhi to Kolkata. It witnesses the movement of around 250 trains on a single day. It is the fourth busiest railway station in the country and is located on the main Howrah-Delhi Grand Chord line.
Similarly, Kanpur’s Chakeri airport is proposed to be named after Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi, a well-known journalist and activist. Earlier, the civilian terminal of Indian Air Force (IAF) base in Gorakhpur was proposed to be renamed after Mahayogi Gorakhnath, the founder of the influential Nath sect which UP CM Yogi Adityanath belongs to.
The UP government has a proposal to rename IAF’s Agra airport after Deen Dayal Upadhyaya again. Moreover, Sangam city Allahabad may also be known as Prayagraj soon.