Bharat or India row: Modi govt backed India in Supreme Court in 2016

New Delhi: “Bharat or India? You want to call it Bharat, go right ahead. Someone wants to call it India, let him call it India,” the Supreme Court had said in 2016 while dismissing a public interest litigation (PIL) which sought a direction that India be called ‘Bharat’ for all purposes.

The same BJP that is embracing the BHARAT term in 2023, has walked out of the Uttar Pradesh state Assembly in 2004 over a resolution passed by Mulayam Singh Yadav to rename India as Bharat

The apex court’s remarks are significant in the context of the high drama on September 5 over the wording of a G20 dinner invitation from the president’s office that described Droupadi Murmu as the “President of Bharat”.

During the 2016 hearing, the bench of Chief Justice T.S. Thakur and Justice U.U. Lalit, both retired, had rapped the petitioner, asking him whether he thinks it has nothing else to do. It reminded him that PILs are meant for the poor.

“The PIL is for poor people. You think we have nothing else to do,” the bench had said on March 11, 2016.

“There is no change in circumstances to consider any change in Article 1 of the Constitution of India,” it had said.

Article 1(1) of the Constitution says, “India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States.”

Opposing the PIL, the Ministry of Home Affairs had said issues regarding the country’s name were deliberated upon extensively by the Constituent Assembly during the drafting of the Constitution and clauses in Article 1 were adopted unanimously, PTI reported.

It had said there was no change in circumstances since the Constituent Assembly debated the issue to warrant a review.