Lok Sabha okays Orissa as Odisha, Oriya as Odia

New Delhi : The Lok Sabha on Tuesday supported with overwhelming majority a legislation altering the name of eastern state of Orissa to Odisha and the language of the state from Oriya to Odia.

The bill to change the name of the state, which was introduced in the Budget Session, was cleared on the first day of the Winter Session as all the 249 Members of Parliament (MPs) present in the House voting in favour of the legislation.

With the renaming, the eastern state seeks to do away with the British legacy of spelling the name of the state and its language.

The proposal to change the name was sent to the Central government by Orissa government in 2008 following a bill moved in the state Assembly.

However, as the Orissa (Alteration of Name) Bill, 2010 and Constitution (113th Amendment) Bill, 2010 for change of language were moved by Home Minister P Chidambaram, it led to a sharp exchange of words between Congress and Biju Janata Dal (BJD) MPs.

Congress MP Bhakta Chandra Das accused the Naveen Patnaik-led BJD Orissa government to selling out to the corporate and affirmed that the Congress was the only true sympathisers of the ethnic, tribal population of the state.

The BJD members strongly objected to it and a verbal duel was witnessed.

The issue was finally resolved when the legislation was put to vote.

Many Indian cities and states have been renamed after independence, including Kanpur (formerly Cawnpore), Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum), Mumbai (Bombay), Chennai (Madras), Kolkata (Calcutta), Pune (Poona), Kochi (Cochin) and North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) to Arunachal Pradesh.