Haryana Health Minister Anil Vij (Express photo by Jasbir Malhi/Files) Haryana Health Minister Anil Vij (Express photo by Jasbir Malhi/Files)

A day after Congress MP Ripun Bora moved a private member’s resolution in Rajya Sabha seeking amendment of the National Anthem, Haryana health minister Anil Vij on Saturday joined the fray and demanded that the word ‘Adhinayak‘ be removed.

“Adhinayak word should also be removed (from National Anthem). ‘Adhinayak’ means dictator and in India, we don’t have dictatorship but democracy. Hence, it should be thought about to remove the word Adhinayak,” the Haryana minister was quoted as saying by news agency ANI. Vij supported the private member’s resolution moved in Parliament for replacing the word ‘Sindh’ with ‘Northeast’.

#WATCH: Haryana Minister Anil Vij says ‘Theek baat hai Sindh ko hataane ki baat hai. Adhinayak shabd ko bhi hatna chahiye. Adhinayak ka matlab hota hai taanaashah. Hindustan mein ab koi taanaashah nahi hai’. pic.twitter.com/z39oGbbv8O — ANI (@ANI) March 17, 2018

Earlier on Friday, Bora had called for replacing the word Sindh with the Northeast India saying, “The National Anthem of India ‘Jana Gana Mana’ mentions Sindh which is no longer part of India; the NorthEast India, which is a very important part of India, finds no mention in the National Anthem.”

READ | Replace ‘Sindh’ with ‘Northeast India’ in National Anthem

The North East is an important part of India and it is unfortunate that it is not a part of the national anthem while Sindh is mentioned, which is no longer a part of India but part of Pakistan, Bora had said.

The national anthem of India, ‘Jana Gana Mana’ was composed in Bengali by Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore in 1911, at a time when British King George V visited the country. During that period, the Indian territory stretched from Balochistan in the west to Sylhet in the east. It was adopted in its Hindi version by the Constituent Assembly as the National Anthem of India on 24 January 1950.

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