Dehradun:
The Uttarakhand government has decided to rename five Navo-vidyalas. The state government has decided to change the name of the institutions, named after Shyama Prasad Mukherjee by the BJP government, to Rajiv Gandhi Navo-vidyala.
The renaming frenzy has been extended to Deen Dayal Upadhyay University which is set to be renamed as Shridev Suman University; the highly successful 108 Emergency services, introduced by the BJP, will also be renamed.
Former Chief Minister BC Khanduri has called this move by the Congress "unfortunate."
"The intention of changing names is not only wrong but unnecessary and it creates confusion among the people. There are governments of different parties in different states; if all these state governments start changing names once they come to power, what will be the state of the country? This is wrong and is not at all farsighted," Mr Khanduri said.
Uttarakhand Chief Minister and Congress leader Vijay Bahuguna defended his government's move, saying, "Funds for a lot of these navo vidyalayas come from the Centre, hence, they can be named after Rajiv Gandhi."
"Since Atal Bihari Vajpayee's tenure as PM, there are a number of schemes running in the state, we haven't changed names of those," Mr Bahuguna added.