Row in Parliament over renaming of Mughalsarai railway station
Mughalsarai
Rajya Sabha was adjourned briefly
The renaming of the iconic Mughalsaria railway station led to a row in Parliament on Friday, with theRajya Sabha being adjourned briefly.
News reports said the central government has approved the Yogi Adityanath government's proposal to rename the station near Varanasi after Deen Dayal Upadhyay.
Upadhyay was a general secretary of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the forerunner to the BJP.
The matter was raised in the Rajya Sabha by the SP's Naresh Agarwal.
After which Samajwadi Party and BSP MPs stormed into the well of the house.
The Hindu reported Agarwal as saying the government was trying to change the character of the country, and his party colleagues as saying the names of persons "who have made no contribution to the freedom struggle" are being mooted.
To which parliamentary affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi objected, the Hindu added, saying the opposition parties “have no objection to Mughal names but cannot see the name of a great thinker.”
To the question of what Upadhyay's contribution to the freedom struggle had been, Naqvi retorted: "Read history."
The Mughalsarai railway station came into being in 1862 when the East India Company linked Howrah to Delhi by rail.
The word "sarai" means rest house.