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Connaught Palace

renamed

Indira Chowk

NEW DELHI: The federal government has renamed the capital's city center after the Gandhi family, ending a century-old association with British colonialists, and raising accusations of sycophancy to the family of former prime ministers.

The Interior Ministry said Connaught Palace and Connaught Circus would now be known as Indira (Gandhi) Chowk and Rajiv (Gandhi) Chowk, or crossings, newspapers reported on Sunday.

The decision came as the Congress Party of Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao celebrated the 51st birth anniversary of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.

Historians and some politicians criticized the decision of the Congress Party government of prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao to end the century-old name for the sprawling circle of white colonnaded buildings housing shops, airline companies and offices.

The downtown area was named after the Duke of Connaught, who visited India from his northern Ireland province of Connaught, in 1903.

The Duke had also laid the foundation stone for India's parliament and the India Gate, a huge sandstone arch of triumph with the names of 85,000 Indian soldiers who died in World War I.

New Delhi's Chief Minister, Madan Lal Khurana, whose Bharatiya Janata Party is the largest opposition group in parliament, said his state government was not consulted about the renaming. "Why don't they rename the entire city as Rajiv Colony," he said.

The Interior Ministry in an unsigned statement faxed to newspaper offices on Saturday night, said the federal government's decision "is in consonance with suggestions from various sources" to rename the area.

Congress lawmaker Manishankar Aiyar, a fervent supporter of the Gandhi Family, who had suggested the change, said the park in the center of the circle was named after India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, the road encircling it after his daughter, Indira Gandhi, and the area itself after her son, Rajiv Gandhi.

"We now have a fitting memorial to the family which laid the foundation for modern India," he said.

Members of the Gandhi family were prime ministers for most of India's 48 years of independence. Rajiv Gandhi's widow, Sonia, still continues to wield enormous influence over the Congress Party.

Historian Khuswant Singh said: "we were ruled for 200 years by the British and English names have become a part of our heritage.-AP