Bihar Minister Santosh Suman seeks renaming of Bakhtiyarpur as 'Nitishpur'

Bihar Minister and Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular) national president Santosh Kumar Suman has urged Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary to rename Bakhtiyarpur, the birthplace of former Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, as 'Nitishpur'.

Announcing the demand on Wednesday, Mr. Suman, son of Union Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, said the town in Patna district is more than a geographical marker. He described it as the birthplace of a mass leader whose long public life reshaped the state's politics, development and governance, and said Mr. Kumar's struggles and memories are tied to that land.

In a post on X, he wrote that the birthplace of Bihar's "great mass leader" should carry his name, and that such a step would amount to a tribute to the pride of the soil, its history and the sentiments attached to it. He said he was placing the proposal before the Chief Minister with that sentiment.

The demand has drawn criticism from the opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal. Party spokesperson Ejaz Ahmed accused Mr. Suman of following the Bharatiya Janata Party's approach to politics, which he said rests on changing names and identities of places. He also alleged that the demand was an attempt at damage control after Mr. Suman's recent remarks seeking a review of the reservation policy and sub-categorisation of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

Mr. Ahmed further said the demand showed that the HAM(S) lacks an ideology of its own, and argued that if Janata Dal (United) itself has not accepted Mr. Kumar's name, the people of Bakhtiyarpur cannot be expected to do so.

This is not the first time such a proposal has been made for the town. BJP leaders in Bihar have raised similar demands repeatedly. In 2018, Union Minister Giriraj Singh sought the renaming of Bakhtiyarpur and other towns named after what he described as Muslim invaders, a demand that gathered pace after the Uttar Pradesh government renamed Mughalsarai railway junction and changed Allahabad to Prayagraj.

In 2021, then BJP MLA Hari Bhushan Thakur demanded that Bakhtiyarpur be renamed Nitish Nagar, arguing that Turkish invader Bakhtiya Khilji had destroyed the ancient Nalanda University yet continued to be glorified. Mr. Kumar, whose birthplace the town is, rejected that demand at the time, dismissing it as "faltu baat", or worthless talk.