The district administration held a meeting with stakeholders on Monday to see if they agreed to rename the hill town of Uttarakhand Jaswantgarh — after rifleman Jaswant Singh, one of the heroes of the 1962 India-China war — after the first chief of defence staff (CDS), late Bipin Rawat.
The stakeholders – businesses, social and political organizations, and hotels — overwhelmingly opposed renaming the town, claiming that it would be costly in terms of tourism, the town’s major source of revenue.
According to the article, BJP MLA Dilip Singh Rawat, who has been loud in his opposition to the renaming of the town, did not attend the Monday meeting. After chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami declared it in early April, the request to rename Lansdowne after CDS Rawat was conveyed to the Centre.
While civil society activists were not opposed to calling the city after Rawat, they felt that renaming Lansdowne would be futile unless essential services were delivered in the city. According to TC Sharma, president of the Lansdowne Hotels Association, the government should first prioritize facility upgrades.
He added, “We neither have good medical facilities here nor any higher educational institutions for our children. Before changing the name of a tourist town that has earned goodwill among tourists over the years, the government should consider all aspects and think about our concerns positively.”
