Akhilesh Yadav changes name of institution set up by Mayawati

Lucknow: What Mayawati did will be undone. That election promise might have been to do with what he termed as faulty governance then, but Akhilesh Yadav is taking it quite literally. After renaming eight districts that his predecessor too had renamed, the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister has now renamed another institution set up by her.

And it is all in the name. The Kanshi Ram Urdu Arabic and Persian University will now be called the Khawaja Moinuddin Chishti University, the UP cabinet has decided.

Ms Mayawati will see red. She has already cried foul accusing the young Chief Minister of insulting Dalit icons by renaming districts that she named in their honour. To have her political mentor, Kanshi Ram's name replaced on the board of an institution she dedicated to his memory, will be unacceptable to the former Chief Minister. Kanshi Ram founded the Bahujan Samaj Party, which Ms Mayawati now heads.

When the Uttar Pradesh cabinet renamed the eight districts last week, it also rechristened a 100-year-old medical college in Lucknow. It was called King George Medical College, was renamed Chhatrapati Sahuji Maharaj University by Ms Mayawati and now is called King George Medical college again.

The 39-year-old Chief Minister has explained that the new names given by Ms Mayawati were difficult to remember, so the Samajwadi Party government has simply gone back to old names.