india

Updated: Jan 20, 2020 09:43 IST

Following the renaming of Uttar Pradesh’s Mughalsarai railway station in 2018, Centre in a notification issued Sunday changed the name of the railway division as well from Mughalsarai to Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Railway Division.

The names of other Railway offices in this Division, bearing the name “Mughalsarai”, may also be changed accordingly, the notification said.

The Mughalsarai railway junction station comes under the East Central Railway zone. It is one of India’s busiest junctions catering to nearly 500 trains a month and home to the largest railway marshalling yard in Asia. The attempt to change the station’s name in 2017 courted controversy when UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath who proposed to rename the station after its ideologue Deendayal Upadhyaya, whose body was found at the junction in 1968, was accused of “tinkering with history.”

Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, was a Jan Sangh leader who was killed in a train theft incident on 11 February 1968 on a railway track.

The first attempt to change its name was made in 1992 by BJP led government. The plan was later shelved by the then state CM who resigned following the outbreak of violence in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition.