Hyderabad: Whatis there in the name? There will be a lot of misunderstanding if these names are uttered. The MLAs on Saturday urged the government to change the names of some villages citing these names sound derogatory.

The issue came up during the discussion on the Bill introduced to amend the Telangana Panchayat Raj in the Assembly. The government had brought the bill to change the name of a village Jain Tirumalapur to Jaianna Tirumalapur. The Panchayat Raj Minister Dhanasri Anasuya (Seethakka) said that the name was related to Jainism.

BJP MLA Palvai Harish Babu gave an unofficial amendment urging the state government to change the name of Lanjaguda in Sirpur Kaghaznagar. Harish Babu said that he cannot utter this name in the House and just spelled it. He urged the name to be changed as Nandiguda as urged by the locals. He also wanted the Lambadi Hatti to be named as Prem Singh Nagar.

The Parigi Congress MLA Rammohan Reddy urged the government to change the name of Donga Enkepally and wanted it to be named as Sanjeeva Nagar. However, the Minister Seethakka said that the issue would be addressed to the district collector, who would submit a report to the government and then a decision would be taken.

Earlier, the House passed a bill to amend the Panchayat Raj Act to remove the two child norm to contest the local body elections. Seethakka said that since the fertility rate fell to 1.7 per cent and it needs to be increased to 2.1 per cent. She said that while the southern states followed the two child norm, there was no such effort by the northern states leading to imbalance and authoritarian rule by the North. There is also a risk of an excess of elderly population hence there was a need to encourage families to have more children.

However, the BJP and CPI members opposed this move stating this was not correct at this juncture. BJP member K Venkataramana Reddy wanted this government to reconsider the decision. CPI leader said that there should be self restraint on family planning. He said that though the government removed the two child norm, it has not fixed the maximum number of children they can have.